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Are the profound, life-changing experiences people claim from psychedelics overblown?

The week after when you're going to work in the pissing rain at 5am the mushrooms can't help you then.

i think psychedelics have helped me in exactly those types of situations. well, not exactly 5am (i go to work later), but i ride my bike to work rain, snow or shine, and the "take time to stop and smell the roses" lesson i learned from psychedelics have helped me appreciate even riding my bike to work in the rain.
 
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A life changing experience doesn't have to be spiritual. It can be simply be reflective and meditative - when I took psychedelics I completely forgot who I was and, when I remembered again (when it wore off) it was like looking in a bloody good mirror at who I really was, because I remembered every single detail of my life as it came back to me piece by piece.
I too consider myself intelligent but I consider that I was wrong about myself in some ways it before I took psychedelics... It was humbling.

(yes I know I said this in PM L&R)
also, people going on with the quoting and all pedantry let's try and move on from this?

I mean, you're obviously right but at the same time you're just failing to read what I say after my original post. I've stated VERY clearly that there are "non spiritual" life changing experiences.

Read post #29, for example
 
I'm not sure I could really explain it well, but I think they (psychedelics) helped me realize a lot of unpleasant things about myself and made me a kinder, gentler, more loving soul. I was in a bad place for lots of years before I did acid. Before that to a lesser extent cannabis/hash mellowed me, but the "hallucinogens" kinda' backed me in a corner and made me take a good look at the sort of person I was. I'm not gonna' say I'm close to all better, but I'm a lot better than I was.
 
Well, in the past I never really had an "earth shattering" experience or anything, though I've definitely had some trips that made me think a lot about certain aspects of my life and the world even months afterwards. It's been a very long time since I've ingested any psychs but I'm sort of feeling the itch now... I feel like I'm at a point in my life where my mind is at it's most open point in regards to having a very important and altering trip.. more so, I think it's what I need right now to help me move forward with being off of H and getting my life back.
 
I've done DXM, MXE, mushrooms and MDMA if you wanna count that. At the time I didn't consider them life-changing experiences, but looking back I became really tight with the friends I did shrooms with and I fell in love with a girl I wouldn't have otherwise thanks to MDMA. Those aren't life-changing experiences in the sense that they gave me some magical insight to my problems that I didn't have without drugs, but they were life-changing in the sense that those experiences strengthened my friendships with people who I wouldn't have been as close to without drugs. Those friendships altered the course of my life for better or worse.
 
Sometimes the experiences are exaggerated, and sometimes they aren't. IMO, any statement about a trip within 2 weeks of the experience must be regarded with a grain of salt. Afterglows, integration, etc.

The true test to see if a trip was life-changing is to check in about 6 months later and see how the person is. Sometimes it takes a month or so for the old patterns (mental as well as habits) to settle back in.

On the other hand, some people take initiative and proactively improve their lives in the wake of a trip. This was catalyzed by the trip, but the real work was done by the individual.

Either way, don't ever let someone's story convince you that a life-changing experience is contained within a substance. It is not. It is within the individual. Always.

Yes it's the persons will that drives the change but sometimes people are at a place where it is hard to think clearly (I was an alcoholic) and it makes sense for people to use whatever tools they can (and drugs are one of the most powerful tools for some people) to make their life more comfortable. It shouldn't be a matter of pride to take advantages of all of life benefits to help with your weaknesses).

Expect more of yourself, others and grow in kindness to truly prosper.;)
 
i think psychedelics have helped me in exactly those types of situations. well, not exactly 5am (i go to work later), but i ride my bike to work rain, snow or shine, and the "take time to stop and smell the roses" lesson i learned from psychedelics have helped me appreciate even riding my bike to work in the rain.

What if you have to travel through a citys worth of cars spewing poison into the air? Can you really stop and smell the exhaust fumes?
 
We now return you to your scheduled programming.

Please try to stay on topic, don't double post and refrain from making personal attacks.

Thanks to all those who did not rise to the off topic flaming and attempted to stay on track. Shame on you, those who continued to derail the thread despite being asked not to by others.

The appropriate action in this case is to create a new thread in another forum or take such heated discussions to PM, as one user suggested. Ektor, you made a constructive contribution but I have removed it to prevent further derailing. You might like to PM it to the intended recipient.
 
Nowadays I prefer to take small to moderate doses, during the day, and spend the day doing daily routine things like laundry and reading and making dinner, rather than heavy doses at night that leave me crouching in a corner for a few hours encountering the incomprehensible. That seems to make it easier to integrate with my daily life. Though I don't think there's anything anyone could take that could make having to go to work every day at 4 in the morning in the pissing rain a pleasant experience. Sorry Ismene. ;)
 
I think the obvious answer to this topic is that of course some are and some aren't. I've seen many cases where people, myself included, talk about how a trip has changed their life dramatically, but then a few weeks later they act the same - nothing has changed at all, it was just a temporary change that elicited nothing in the long term.

In other cases the profundity of a trip's power in changing a life can sometimes be grossly underestimated.

My first experience with aMT was one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life and completely defeated years of my social anxiety that I'd tried seemingly everything to beat with no avail, my psychological ailment progressing and becoming worse and worse from day to day. After that trip I got out and made friends and completely turned my life around, and have had probably the best year of my life. Tomorrow marks exactly a year since that trip, and I still thank the universe for letting something so healing happen. :)

It's eerie looking back. Even just an hour before the trip, and even in my wildest of dreams I could not have imagined that I would have ever have overcome this obstacle that seemed gargantuan to me and impossible to get past.. but all it took was 50 milligrams of freebase aMT and 16 hours in my best friend's living room and the mountain became a molehill.
 
Though I don't think there's anything anyone could take that could make having to go to work every day at 4 in the morning in the pissing rain a pleasant experience. Sorry Ismene. ;)

Thank you for your compassion z ;)
 
I think the obvious answer to this topic is that of course some are and some aren't. I've seen many cases where people, myself included, talk about how a trip has changed their life dramatically, but then a few weeks later they act the same - nothing has changed at all, it was just a temporary change that elicited nothing in the long term.

In other cases the profundity of a trip's power in changing a life can sometimes be grossly underestimated.

My first experience with aMT was one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life and completely defeated years of my social anxiety that I'd tried seemingly everything to beat with no avail, my psychological ailment progressing and becoming worse and worse from day to day. After that trip I got out and made friends and completely turned my life around, and have had probably the best year of my life. Tomorrow marks exactly a year since that trip, and I still thank the universe for letting something so healing happen. :)

It's eerie looking back. Even just an hour before the trip, and even in my wildest of dreams I could not have imagined that I would have ever have overcome this obstacle that seemed gargantuan to me and impossible to get past.. but all it took was 50 milligrams of freebase aMT and 16 hours in my best friend's living room and the mountain became a molehill.

Very nice :) I cannot say there was a specific trip for me which made me a different person but there were a few ones with various substances, which surely changed something. With MXE for example i had moments of introspection far beyond everything i could ever imagine, freeing me from some sort of social anxiety i had for a very long time. But it wasn't just that, i also had some profound moments where i had a crystal clear overview over myself, my situation, my habits and everything being inside that microcosm of my perception of life. It's not possible to change everything at once, but if one had such insight(s), it's possible to act on them one after another if one is willing to.

Drugs are doing no real miracles, it's us!
 
Drugs are doing no real miracles, it's us!

Something a lot of people forget is that while a human can conquer a problem without drugs, a drug can't conquer a problem without the human doing something about what they've learned or accessed really - combined together they can push the bounds of therapy and creativity, but few people actually take the time to use them in this way.

Few people leave time to integrate, and fewer still actually stick to all the stuff they've discovered.
 
Few people leave time to integrate, and fewer still actually stick to all the stuff they've discovered.

Very hard thing to do tho JG. That's why indians go into the hills and live solitary lives never speaking to try and keep to the path. And imagine how simple their lives are compared to ours.
 
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