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Can psychedelics make you ego syntonic?

Mr.Mountain

Mr.Mountain

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Dec 16, 2012
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People tend to be ego dystonic meaning that they can rationally differentiate their thought process from themselves, but if someone is ego syntonic they begin to fully associate their thoughts with reality and can become psychotic. Could psychedelic substances such as psilocybin and LSD cause this shift from an ego dystonic state to an ego syntonic state and cause an individual to harm themselves? What areas of the brain become affected in this process if there is such a substance that does this?
 
If you are asking if LSD and psilocybin can cause someone to go psychotic and harm themselves then yes, that is definitely possible. No idea what brain areas are affected though, you'd have to ask someone with more knowledge for that.
 
I mean accepting the irrationality of a trip as a 100% true (syntonic), as opposed to a part of the tripper knowing deep down inside that they have some rationality left (distonic).
 
I think that is possible, though I think it's down a lot of different variables. I haven't seen it happen so much with LSD or shrooms, but with something like 25I, which in my experience is much more intrusive, then I can definitely see this kind of thing happening. There are just moments in trips where people can become convinced of almost anything, and be unable to detach themselves from that, so if it's something negative from which they try to hide, it can really come back to bite them, or indeed take over the trip entirely. Like I said though, I think it's very much down to many different variables, like the persons' own experiences and mental strength, as well as the dose taken and the specific psychedelic itself. I have certainly seen some crazy irrational stuff happening before where people forget they are tripping at all from 25I overdoses, but I've also seen it happen once to somebody who had taken LSD. IMO there are lots of variables involved that extend beyond the drug itself, though with drugs that are sufficiently intrusive (like 25I at high doses), then some people may just cave in and be dominated by a negative experience.
 
Psychedelics seem to be able to flip the switch in both directions. For a long time before my first trip on LSD I did some rather antisocial things that I considered a normal part of my identity, and it was LSD that caused me to recognize the problems therein. At the same time, the case history shows plenty of people who get some rather strange ideas from psychedelics and hold on to them, see for example Terence McKenna.

Overall, psychedelics seem to make people question themselves more often than not, though.

For those unfamiliar with terminology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosyntonic_and_egodystonic

To oversimplify, ego syntonic means you don't want to change. Ego dystonic means that you do. In both cases these are relative to outside observers who see some sort of problem with your behavior.
 
A better wording would be that with ego syntonic, your behavior/thought/whatever is synchronous with the ego and with dystonic it is not. This stands outside of positive or negative behavior as your ideal self-image could be either, though it does imply that you don't want to change when you're ego syntonic.
 
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It could only theoretically happen in a tiny percentage of people. Pretty much everyone who takes LSD or psilocybin knows they are tripping - that's the whole point of it.
 
Mr.Mountain said:
People tend to be ego dystonic meaning that they can rationally differentiate their thought process from themselves, but if someone is ego syntonic they begin to fully associate their thoughts with reality and can become psychotic. Could psychedelic substances such as psilocybin and LSD cause this shift from an ego dystonic state to an ego syntonic state and cause an individual to harm themselves? What areas of the brain become affected in this process if there is such a substance that does this?
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I had never heard of these terms but I have to say for me personally, it was the other way round.
I definetly associated my thoughts with reality before trying psychedelics. Since trying them I can differentiate more easily.

So for me psychedelics "helped" me to go from an ego syntonic state to a ego dystonic state.
 
Ismene said:
It could only theoretically happen in a tiny percentage of people. Pretty much everyone who takes LSD or psilocybin knows they are tripping - that's the whole point of it.
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What about LSD being a "clean" high where people sense their experiences as a hidden version of reality. I know I've heard this more than once.
 
pmoseman said:
What about LSD being a "clean" high where people sense their experiences as a hidden version of reality. I know I've heard this more than once.
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Yeah the feeling that you're privy to some kind of hidden knowledge is quite common - at least in the early days of tripping. I think as you get more experienced that fades.
 
Ismene said:
Yeah the feeling that you're privy to some kind of hidden knowledge is quite common - at least in the early days of tripping. I think as you get more experienced that fades.
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I feel as though the experience of LSD can encourage solipsism, the idea that "reality" and consciousness only exist in our minds. Maybe realizing causes us to become imaginative about what reality could be.
 
Certainly encourages me to believe that reality is largely how you perceive it. On LSD looking at the sky is breathtaking, makes you wonder what stops you from realising that when sober.
 
Ismene said:
Certainly encourages me to believe that reality is largely how you perceive it. On LSD looking at the sky is breathtaking, makes you wonder what stops you from realising that when sober.
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The sky is the sky. It is either breathtaking or it is not. <3
Ismene said:
Yeah the feeling that you're privy to some kind of hidden knowledge is quite common - at least in the early days of tripping. I think as you get more experienced that fades.
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Then is it any fun any more?
 
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^
No it's still fun but eventually after you havn't solved any great scientific mysteries you tend to believe these magical insights are just for your own enjoyment rather than having much practical use.
 
Hard to know what else to call them - what is the best description for something you initially think is a deep insight into reality but then perhaps turns out not to be quite as deep as you thought? :)
 
^I think the most interesting thing about these insights is not their meaning, well not as long as it doesn't have any real context anyway, but rather the process that made you come to that conclusion. You're standing outside of the box, while still ending up with something that seems pretty rational

But lock up someone like Niels Bohr in a room with just some LSD, a scientific problem and maybe something to hydrate and he'd surely come up with something interesting. As much as we like to think we're smart, most of us at least, don't have such an understanding of physics and so our insights can be a bit misdirected.

Ismene said:
Certainly encourages me to believe that reality is largely how you perceive it. On LSD looking at the sky is breathtaking, makes you wonder what stops you from realising that when sober.
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Well, only a very small part of what we see is sensorial input anyway, the rest of it is a construct of memory/language. Now the question is, do objects as we know them really exists as such or is it really just an interpretation of various particles doing weird things which only finds coherence with others' version of reality because the processing signal is the same?

If it's the latter, then the question would be: Why do cameras capture what we see?

That said, the sky is breathtaking regardless of drug use!
 
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