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is the "ego dissolution" effect of psychedelics a delusion?

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ruledbydirt

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Oct 3, 2012
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Hey, I want to bring up what I feel is a pretty serious topic, one that will probably lead to controversy but I really want to read everyone's own life experiences on this and weigh them out. I'm in a moment of profound confusion on this matter and some open discussion about this I hope will clarify things.

The first time that I had a trip that I considered to be "ego dissolving" was when I was 17 (six years ago). It was mushrooms, and it was truly a paradigm-shattering moment of understanding that the fantasies that I once felt gave my life purpose were entirely false, that the patterns and cycles life take exist in everything and because of this nothing is unique. I continued using mushrooms to arrive at understandings common to the fungus and that I chose to live my life by. Such as, everything on this planet is part of a greater body, that each one of us are like cells in a body, but human beings went insane and began to believe their own existence is more important than the existence of the planet that contains us. Just like how cancer cells begin to act; they forget they're cells in a body and begin living for their own sake, becoming a fatal disease in that body, killing the reason they're alive in the first place. This is the disease of ego, the cancer on the planet earth embodied through the human species, the cancer cells. I continued on this path to try to heal through psychedelics, continuing to take larger doses to the point where I had experiences where I thought I had died, temporarily killing the physical ego.

Having these new understandings on board made me feel very alienated from everyone, as this is also common in others who take this path. The illusions that people distract themselves with became so flagrantly obvious to me, and also so disgusting to me, that I began to withdraw from everyone who I felt lived enmeshed in every abstraction that nourish their petty selves (which really was almost everyone to me). I found others that I felt were like-minded to me and made what I felt were very important friends. I even befriended others who were far more experienced in their path to the point where it seemed like they were becoming healers themselves. Some I really, really looked up to, hoping to be like some day.

I also became very dependent on cannabis to keep my consciousness at a sub-psychedelic level to avoid slipping into superficial modes of thinking. My isolation incubated intense inexpressible emotions in me that I tried to exorcise through making music. My path seemed to be all that mattered. Sometimes depression would make me slip into self-destructive attitudes, then I would pick myself up, or perceive that I was picking my up, to become all the more dedicated to "my path" to keep it from happening again.

Then life started getting strange. The individuals who I thought were such important friends started abandoning me and treating me with disregard. I started to notice very disturbing self-important behaviors in those I looked up to. The psychedelic culture that seemed like a promising possibility of gathering like-minds started to seem so convinced they were "the beautiful people" that they were excluding everyone outside their circle. The ones i so desperately wanted to talk to about how I'm feeling started to seem like they only wanted to talk about themselves, and cut me off when I was getting anywhere that I felt was honest as if they're deliberately trying to stop me from speaking, as if they were perceiving I was entering a negative thought loop or something. I got stuck living with my parents and my brother who I thought for so long weren't my "real family" and that I just had to pretend to get along with them because of the illusion that connects us. Then my drive became hyperfocused on working to make money to move out. By then, I had no friends to even move out with. I have become the very definition of the egocentric, feeling separate from everyone and everything, driven by the most selfish desires.

last night I was thrown into such a violent weeping fit that the only thing that could stop me was going outside and sleeping in the woods. Today the truth that I have been an obsessive egocentric all along seems absolutely undeniable. My mom even tried to tell me this last year. It was a moment when I thought I was dangerous and I asked her to hospitalize me. She sat me down to tell me that my whole life I've always needed complete control and that I've always responded aggressively towards both others and myself when my control is threatened. At the time it seemed absolutely absurd to me, since my life path seemed to be dedicated to relinquishing control. But she was right.

My last trip was a few months ago and it was a 6-hour marathon of regret and self-hate. I feel irredeemable. I'd rather be dead than be toxic to the planet, the reason I'm alive. But suicide would be the ultimate egocentric option, wouldn't it? This post even looks like nothing but an egocentric confessional, apparently that's how I communicate, even though my intention is to introduce the possibility that the 'psychedelic path' is truly just a trap that distorts and inflates our egos rather than dissolves them. However, I do sincerely want to know what your experiences have been struggling with ego in the 'psychedelic path'. I'm not asking for advice on my situation; this thread is NOT about how to make me better. I'm asking for your experience on this particular issue. I'm asking for your confessional. Because there's something severely fucked up going on in the psychedelic community it seems, and we need start talking about it. Perhaps Gaia is testing us by presenting us with a very complex riddle in the vision plants she has offered us by imbuing them with the ability to worsen the disease they once seemed to be medicine for.
 
Your "psychedelic community" is not everyone else's, FYI. Perhaps your path just diverges from the people you used to hang out with?
In the end a clique is just a clique, try defining yourself rather than supressing your ego?

The ego loss of psychedelics is no more delusory than any other effect of hallucinogenic drugs.
 
I couldn't get through the whole post. You remind me of me when I was doing acid every weekend and my advice is try not to overthink it. Balance yourself first, then tackle the big concepts.

My suggestion, and what personally helped me was the philosophy of people like Alan Watts, and then the further studying I did on Buddhism and Hindu belief systems.
Everything is as it should be so don't fret because you have to be at peace with yourself and your own direction before you can truly begin to explore the psychedelic realm.

A far more extreme suggestion is smoke some DMT, that also might set you on the right path as it did me, although there was a temporary detour which was the aforementioned LSD abuse...

Anyway I digress. Enjoy life!! The Universe loves you, that's why you're here :)
 
It seems that you have had an honest view of some of your traits and they don't compare to the person you thought you were which is something I've had to face. Do you feel that you've been using psychedelics beyond their beneficial boundaries? I did years ago with psilocybe mushrooms used with over regularity which although a magical experience in the early days soon lost it's magic and what started out as a positive, enlightening experience with much to much introspection led to me seeing nothing but negative things within me and on the worst occasion, felt that I wasn't worthy of living on this planet and I felt that everything that was wrong in the world was my fault. Felt absolutely hopeless and desolate. I've never felt suicidally depressed like I did that day. Was in beautiful surroundings sat atop a hill overlooking the town with the sea glimmering in the beautiful summer sunshine and I should have felt on top of the world but I couldn't have felt more opposite.

I'm not really up on psychedelic theory and I'm sure many would view me as a bit of a philistine so I may have little useful to say but it seems that your circle have been heading in diverging directions as the psyches have affected your circle in different ways so it seems to follow that a distance will naturally open up between you and maybe that's just par for the course. If you are all on different levels then mutually beneficial interaction is sure to fade. I'm not really up on the ego related stuff but I'm sure I'll learn. Personally I see psyches as a tool too aid understanding and feel that used correctly can have lasting positive effects, I don't really see them as a means of unlocking the mysteries of the universe or having the ability to bring us closer to God but that's just my view and what do I know. If there's nothing of use to you here then just ignore. Just a few rambling thoughts from one whom I freely admit has much to learn.

Be positive :)
 
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It seems that you have had an honest view of some of your traits and they don't compare to the person you thought you were which is something I've had to face. Do you feel that you've been using psychedelics beyond their beneficial boundaries? I did years ago with psilocybe mushrooms used with over regularity which although a magical experience in the early days soon lost it's magic and what started out as a positive, enlightening experience with much to much introspection led to me seeing nothing but negative things within me and on the worst occasion, felt that I wasn't worthy of living on this planet and I felt that everything that was wrong in the world was my fault. Felt absolutely hopeless and desolate. I've never felt suicidal like I did that day. Was in beautiful surroundings and should have felt on top of the world but felt opposite.

I'm not really up on psychedelic theory and I'm sure many would view me as a bit of a philistine so I may have little useful to say but it seems that your circle have been heading in diverging directions as the psyches have affected your circle in different ways so it seems to follow that a distance will naturally open up between you and maybe that's just par for the course. If you are all on different levels then mutually beneficial interaction is sure to fade. I'm not really up on the ego related stuff but sure I'll learn. Personally I see psyches as a tool too aid understanding and feel that used correctly can have lasting positive effects but I don't really see them as a means of unlocking the mysteries of the universe or having the ability to bring us closer to God but that's just my view and what do I know. If there's nothing of use to you here then just ignore. Just a few rambling thoughts from one who I freely admit has much to learn.

Bee positive :)

This is a very thoughtful and compassionate post. It is very relevant. It is true; the ones I was close to are fading away and it is a sorrowful time. Thank you for understanding and sharing your insights.
 
I think the vast majority of people confuse "losing your ego" with "the effects of taking a psychedelic drug". No-one understands the term "ego" - it was something Freud made up 100 years ago and like most of his theories is now regarded as complete bullshit. People read an old article of Tim Learys online and then think when they're tripping that "Dude, this must be like losing my ego!!". It isn't - it's just the effect of a psychedelic drug.

The only reason "ego" ever got linked to psychedelic drugs was because Leary back in the 60s wanted to try and talk to anti-drug committes without using terms like "tripping" or "getting high" so he started using terms from psychoanalysis and eastern religions. It never meant anything. You're tripping - end of story. You arn't "losing your ego" or "reaching enlightenment". You're just high on a psychedelic drug and that's something beautiful all by itself. There's no need to reach for any other silly terms for it.
 
^The self concept as "ego" is not now regarded as "bullshit." But yeah, the ego within Freud's complex of the the Id and Super Ego has certainly lost currency. Yet the "ego" remains conceptually relevant as the theater from which psychic defenses are mounted, and neurobiologically as a distinguished electrochemical pattern. Thus, the degree to which psychedelics chemically disrupt the ego pattern constitutes ego dissolution, and to which they set it into such disarray as to be supplanted by the activity of sub-ego brain systems, ego death.
 
^lol this argument has been discussed in great length many times here. After great reflection i somewhat agree with Ismene. If ego death really happens then how can anyone remember it without a sense of self? how would you know it happened to you? Although my memory gets hazy around those type of experiences i still have some sense of agency, even on salvia when i forget i was ever a person, i'm still something and that 'i' is still there. Even if i feel like my consciousness has dissolved into a greater unified being, i still recognize myself as a part of that being.
 
^How do you think animals experience subjectively? A sense of self is not necessary for awareness. You are making the same essential error that people of the 17th-18th century made when they used Descartes' philosophy as justification to surgically experiment on living dogs without anesthetic as non-experiencing biological machines that lack a self-concept. Yes they lack a self-concept, but ...

EDIT: That or your idea of what "self" entails is far beyond what is practical to make sense of the living world.

After great reflection i somewhat agree with Ismene. If ego death really happens then how can anyone remember it without a sense of self? how would you know it happened to you?

How is what you're asking ego death to be different from amnesia? You deny an experience by saying it's not possible because of what you interpret the term "ego death" to convey. Clearly people are experiencing something distinct and calling it ego death. Just because what's described doesn't match up to your definition of the terms doesn't mean that something isn't worthy of a name. There's a need for new language and there aren't new words. That's the problem that's being argued over as I see it, and that's why the "ego death is or isn't" argument is perpetuated. There's always another person to interpret the terms differently than another to keep it rolling and the topic is just slippery enough to keep us from realizing how silly it is to grapple over.
 
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To lose an "ego" you have to have accepted the idea of "ego" in the first place. It was created by a philosopher......... whose works you should look up, read, understand, and then wonder why the fuck you were clinging to someone else's idea of "ego" in the first place, and why it has caused you so much confusion, since you had never even heard of the book where it is proposed as a concept - yet you knew what an "ego" was - or thought you did.
You have to know what something is, before you know that you have lost it -- or dissolved it (in what?!).
 
There's a good psychedelics & social alienation thread somewhere around here that might be worthwhile for the op to check out. I have a little bit of experiences with stuff like this but I'm on a mobile device & don't have time to type it up now. Suffice it to say late teens to mid 20s is a very transformative time for many people with or without psychedelic drugs. Coming to grips with a changing worldview & some revelations about some unhealthy patterns in your life is bound to be a little difficult, especially with the suggestible state that frequent psychedelic & cannabis use can leave you in.

In regards to ego loss, I generally interpret that to mean losing the boundary between the self & not the self. This tends to happen on more intense trips, but also in a variety of other circumstances. There's actually been a fair bit of academic research on it that's really interesting. You can achieve a very similar state from either eclectically or magnetically interrupting the activity at the posterior temporo-parietal junction. Weird wild stuff. So in that sense, yes one can lose one's ego. However people obviously have their own definitions for that word and this can be problematic, but semantics can always be problematic, hence I generally try to avoid discussing them at length.
 
No-one understands the term "ego"

I think the simplest definition of ego is the symbolic representation of yourself. The web of thoughts about yourself.

But this definition makes little sense if you see no difference between reality and your symbolic representation of reality.

Reality isn't words. Reality is qmjdlfmoqsdjgmlkjg
 
The ego is what you believe to be you. All the concepts and ideas about yourself that have been given to you. People are programmed from birth to think they have a set of attributes. Every idea or thought you have about yourself is illusory. The ego is also what comes in play when you are concerned about what others think about you.

To the poster chatting about fraud, this is completely false. Of course there is an ego. Everyone walks and talks with other people's perception of them in mind, and those that don't have achieved ego-death. The ego is a major part of life obviously and to deny this seems absolutely silly. yes, people do worry about what others think about them, yes this does prevent most people from doing what they want to do (dancing in public, singing aloud with the utmost sincerity, telling someone you love them ect.)

The ego is here and it is a problem. DUH!
 
You have to know what something is, before you know that you have lost it -- or dissolved it (in what?!).

Good point dmt.

In the drug sense the "ego" appears to mean "something you believe about yourself that can be affected by taking a psychedelic drug". The question that arises after this is how do you know that the state you reach when you're high on a psychedelic drug isn't just another manifestation of your "ego" - ie you now believe something else about yourself because you're stoned out of your mind. Why is one state more "ego-free" or more "enlightened" than the other?

Can some teenage kid drop mushrooms and 60 minutes later be in some state of "ego-death" or "enlightenment"? Or is he just fucking stoned?

Incidentally, I'm not putting being stoned down - I consider being fucking stoned a far more heavenly state that some buddhist idea of "enlightenment" or Freudian "ego-less".
 
Clearly people are experiencing something distinct and calling it ego death.

Yeah, they're calling it that because everyone on the internet says "ego-death" is the ultimate trip. So to sound like you're groovy and down with the kids you feel pressured to say "I had an ego-death, I reached zen enlightenment". When really there's a voice inside you whispering "I just really fucking stoned".
 
Hey, I want to bring up what I feel is a pretty serious topic, one that will probably lead to controversy but I really want to read everyone's own life experiences on this and weigh them out. I'm in a moment of profound confusion on this matter and some open discussion about this I hope will clarify things.

The first time that I had a trip that I considered to be "ego dissolving" was when I was 17 (six years ago). It was mushrooms, and it was truly a paradigm-shattering moment of understanding that the fantasies that I once felt gave my life purpose were entirely false, that the patterns and cycles life take exist in everything and because of this nothing is unique. I continued using mushrooms to arrive at understandings common to the fungus and that I chose to live my life by. Such as, everything on this planet is part of a greater body, that each one of us are like cells in a body, but human beings went insane and began to believe their own existence is more important than the existence of the planet that contains us. Just like how cancer cells begin to act; they forget they're cells in a body and begin living for their own sake, becoming a fatal disease in that body, killing the reason they're alive in the first place. This is the disease of ego, the cancer on the planet earth embodied through the human species, the cancer cells. I continued on this path to try to heal through psychedelics, continuing to take larger doses to the point where I had experiences where I thought I had died, temporarily killing the physical ego.

Having these new understandings on board made me feel very alienated from everyone, as this is also common in others who take this path. The illusions that people distract themselves with became so flagrantly obvious to me, and also so disgusting to me, that I began to withdraw from everyone who I felt lived enmeshed in every abstraction that nourish their petty selves (which really was almost everyone to me). I found others that I felt were like-minded to me and made what I felt were very important friends. I even befriended others who were far more experienced in their path to the point where it seemed like they were becoming healers themselves. Some I really, really looked up to, hoping to be like some day.

I also became very dependent on cannabis to keep my consciousness at a sub-psychedelic level to avoid slipping into superficial modes of thinking. My isolation incubated intense inexpressible emotions in me that I tried to exorcise through making music. My path seemed to be all that mattered. Sometimes depression would make me slip into self-destructive attitudes, then I would pick myself up, or perceive that I was picking my up, to become all the more dedicated to "my path" to keep it from happening again.

Then life started getting strange. The individuals who I thought were such important friends started abandoning me and treating me with disregard. I started to notice very disturbing self-important behaviors in those I looked up to. The psychedelic culture that seemed like a promising possibility of gathering like-minds started to seem so convinced they were "the beautiful people" that they were excluding everyone outside their circle. The ones i so desperately wanted to talk to about how I'm feeling started to seem like they only wanted to talk about themselves, and cut me off when I was getting anywhere that I felt was honest as if they're deliberately trying to stop me from speaking, as if they were perceiving I was entering a negative thought loop or something. I got stuck living with my parents and my brother who I thought for so long weren't my "real family" and that I just had to pretend to get along with them because of the illusion that connects us. Then my drive became hyperfocused on working to make money to move out. By then, I had no friends to even move out with. I have become the very definition of the egocentric, feeling separate from everyone and everything, driven by the most selfish desires.

last night I was thrown into such a violent weeping fit that the only thing that could stop me was going outside and sleeping in the woods. Today the truth that I have been an obsessive egocentric all along seems absolutely undeniable. My mom even tried to tell me this last year. It was a moment when I thought I was dangerous and I asked her to hospitalize me. She sat me down to tell me that my whole life I've always needed complete control and that I've always responded aggressively towards both others and myself when my control is threatened. At the time it seemed absolutely absurd to me, since my life path seemed to be dedicated to relinquishing control. But she was right.

My last trip was a few months ago and it was a 6-hour marathon of regret and self-hate. I feel irredeemable. I'd rather be dead than be toxic to the planet, the reason I'm alive. But suicide would be the ultimate egocentric option, wouldn't it? This post even looks like nothing but an egocentric confessional, apparently that's how I communicate, even though my intention is to introduce the possibility that the 'psychedelic path' is truly just a trap that distorts and inflates our egos rather than dissolves them. However, I do sincerely want to know what your experiences have been struggling with ego in the 'psychedelic path'. I'm not asking for advice on my situation; this thread is NOT about how to make me better. I'm asking for your experience on this particular issue. I'm asking for your confessional. Because there's something severely fucked up going on in the psychedelic community it seems, and we need start talking about it. Perhaps Gaia is testing us by presenting us with a very complex riddle in the vision plants she has offered us by imbuing them with the ability to worsen the disease they once seemed to be medicine for.

I think it's common to see things from the outside, not so much as looking at yourself from outside the box, but seeing things through the eyes of the cardboard box, at yourself inside it, and at things outside it. Shrooms were my vehicle for this. Not acid at all. Acid was too visceral for me to understand anything. But with shrooms, I realized that I can be a huge asshole, and that people around me, especially on the road, are perceiving things differently; that I should be more considerate to the people around me. Of course, I have been struggling with this as sometimes I realize how other people around me are assholes too, and that it's necessary to ignore courtesy, and just do what I need to do, without consideration to their desires.

That said, I agree with Tangerin0, don't overthink things. It's best in life to maintain inertia because predictability makes everyone calm and efficient.
 
^How do you think animals experience subjectively? A sense of self is not necessary for awareness. You are making the same essential error that people of the 17th-18th century made when they used Descartes' philosophy as justification to surgically experiment on living dogs without anesthetic as non-experiencing biological machines that lack a self-concept. Yes they lack a self-concept, but ...

well i'd argue that animals have some sort of concept of self, insofar as they experience things from their own perspective. Of course i can't know anything about how an animal experiences the world :) so i can't really answer that question. I think animals like cats and dogs have some sort of agency.

psood0nym said:
EDIT: That or your idea of what "self" entails is far beyond what is practical to make sense of the living world.

I find the self is hard to define but it's the thing that interpret sensory data and provides me with the collection of images that make up my reality. I assign the viewer or senser of this data to be "I" or 'me.' That is where my sense of self comes from. It is also the awareness that i am individual.

I can agree that psychedelics do provide the experience of losing this sense of self, as in not being aware that you are connected to this body which senses things around you or that you are some other being. And also of the experience of not feeling like an individual but feeling that oneness. Still my point is that something is experiencing these things and if you can tell me it happened then obviously there was some thing that experienced it and that some thing is your sense of self however distorted it may be.

psood0nym said:
How is what you're asking ego death to be different from amnesia? You deny an experience by saying it's not possible because of what you interpret the term "ego death" to convey. Clearly people are experiencing something distinct and calling it ego death. Just because what's described doesn't match up to your definition of the terms doesn't mean that something isn't worthy of a name. There's a need for new language and there aren't new words. That's the problem that's being argued over as I see it, and that's why the "ego death is or isn't" argument is perpetuated. There's always another person to interpret the terms differently than another to keep it rolling and the topic is just slippery enough to keep us from realizing how silly it is to grapple over.

my point is that ego death would be the same as amnesia as there is nothing there to experience it so you wouldn't know anyway. Yeah i get that ego loss is a term used to describe a psychedelic experience that people have or even sober experiences but i don't think it's an accurate term to describe those experiences. I can accept ego distorting or something like that. It would be simple enough to just describe this experience as tripping really hard rather than ego-death. This whole argument has been fleshed out a few times with solid definitions and terms. I think ego death or loss is just a poor term to describe the experience.
 
Is falling asleep "ego death", or "ego loss", or "ego dissolution", or "falling asleep"?
 
There's somethings i need to clarify in my post. I wrote it in an emotional moment when I wasn't thinking straight.

First of all, the thread title is misleading. The psychedelic experience in and of itself of course dissolves ego boundaries, I'm not denying that. I'm asking if in the long run, those who choose to use psychedelic medicine to attempt to get a better handle on overcoming their self-importance and narcissism wind up trapping themselves in a loop of self-importance and narcissism. I'm talking more about ego within psychedelic subcultures which is beginning to look almost worse than egos who haven't even touched psychedelics.

Second, I am not talking about the Freudian ego, which is an aspect of his very limited model of Id-Ego-Superego. Ego is just latin for "I". I am not uneducated in the different conceptions of ego in the very convoluted field of psychoanalysis. I was using the term in its common understanding which is that which creates the illusion of separation and isolation, which includes self-importance and the drive for control. Without ego we realize we're all connected in some way and that separation and isolation is just a nightmare shadow-play.

I've seen the psychedelics & social alienation thread. I was very content in being alienated from society but it starts to get more troublesome when i start to feel alienated from others who have been alienated from society for the same reasons I have. I live in the US which is well known for exhibiting a malignant individualism in its people. United States culture is a very nightmarish loop where to alienate oneself is to conform. It begins to be impossible to tell the difference between alienation and conformity.

for everyone who thinks i'm an acidhead, yes I realize my first post comes off as very heady and overanalytical which is very characteristic of LSD, however I'm actually not a fan of LSD and I try to stick to the plants. I think I just had too much tea honestly.
 
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