Psychedelics and personality boosting.

[HeavilySedated]

Hey guys.
My topic here is about taking the wonderful tripping experience and applying it in real life to better oneself. I'll explain what I mean-
When I use LSD it changes me. Typically I'm asocial and detached, and I don't like these traits because they inhibit my life. But when I'm tripping, a completely different side of me arises. For example, I can engage other (sober) people in meaningful and coherent conversations for hours on end. I tried analyzing my social behavior when under the influence, and I find that I can absorb people in very naturally. If someone tells me something about themselves, I'll ask a few follow up questions, which would lead to lovely exchange of converse. I find myself fascinated by what people tell me, and I can effortlessly socialize with total strangers, and also have extreme fun doing so.

But that's not all. When I'm on a psychedelic people are somehow automatically drawn to me, something which never happens normally. When I'm high, I feel all fired up inside and I have the confidence of doing things I normally have extreme aversion to.

What I'm trying to say is, my life feels like there's a huge glass wall separating me from the world. I can hear and see things around me, but I can't feel them. That makes me disconnected and uninterested in life around me. Taking a psychedelic magically removes that wall, but when the effects are through I go back to being the same person as before.

I wanted to open a discussion about how you can use the experience of the trip so as to effect everything else you do in life. Any ideas?

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

This is a primary pursuit of psychonautics and entheogenic drug use, the use of substances to better oneself as a whole.
I have been interested in this field of study since I was fourteen, and I am now eighteen. In that time I feel like I've truly found my self (Note: Self is fliud and develops with time.), and that has led me to become more confident. My recent problem is that I have grown out of the people I know right now. Most of my friends are still raving and partying and trying to get fucked up, and I guess that's just not my noise. I'd much rather just chill somewhere and appreciate the incredible beauty afforded to me by psychadelics and the like. So I plan on beginning more extensive research into my own mind and challenges; There will always be more challenges to overcome in your own mind, and there will always be more to explore and discover and create.

 

[boxednirvana]

Simple answer: People are most likely drawn to you because of the big smile on your face and willingness to look them in the eye. Most asocial people don't do either of those things so it's no mystery why they're not attracting people. Also, and you said it yourself, you're willing to ask people questions about them, and if there's one thing people love to talk about it's themselves. Especially in our narcissistic, self impressed world.

Smile at people and ask them questions about their lives. No LSD needed, people will be drawn to you. :D

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

^ Good practical advice.

I also believe that your entire world is shaped by your mind, and the interaction between your thoughts (which manifest in your personality and behaviors) and the presentation of choice by existence. So if you alter your actual ways of thinking, you will achieve whatever effects desired.

 

[Ismene]

I think it's a pretty much a dead end trying to "incorporate it into your everyday life". The beauty of the psychchedelic experience is having a few hours free from your normal perception. That doesn't make it any less valuable.

 

[thoughtsUnThought]

While i was never overly asocial, i can relate to this topic none-the-less. I used psychedelics, and meditation to adjust my social aptitude as well as my comfort level in social situations.

The process of developing is a daily chore if you want it to get done right (ie, exactly the way you want it). While psychedelics give us a chance to have monumental experiences which can and do dramatically guide our neuropatterns, the work of truly becoming who you want to be is usually not as easy as 'the perfect trip'.

If you take any of my advice i'd say work with meditations, get to the point where you are able to access that centeredness without drugs. When you are able to initiate silence of mind in your life, you will find it much easier to not 'over think' situations and become anxious. But also, through meditations you are, from my experience, able to really go far in guiding your development and your neuro-patterning.

The 'integration of such into your daily life' is something which needs tending to outside of your trips. Take what you've learned from you trips, that 'vision of a more fluid you', and learn to bring it about in your sober life through harnessing your consciousness without drugs...and the best way to learn to tame the horse of mind is through meditations....

Once you have silence in your mind and emotions you can see that all the wiring is right in front of you, you're already in the control room :D

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

Ismene, escapism is NOT psychonautics; that's recreational drug use. I'm not saying this isn't good, I love getting away from reality for a while. But if you want to affect a lasting change in your life, you've got to at least utilize what you learn from research.

I definitely agree that it's not the psychadelic experience itself that makes these things happen though. Benefit is from what you realize and envision and accept during the experience. At least, this is what has always worked for me.. I try to implement every insight I have. I think psychadelics are a great to for self-analysis and -improvement, but you've got to make it real for yourself in reality.
This is why I've asked elsewhere on PD about a permanent shift in one's cognitive paradigm from psychadelics, for the betterment of one's self.

 

[Ismene]

Don't you drag the experience down trying to "incorporate" it tho? I consider the psychedelic experience sacred and beautiful - I don't want to carry it with me when I'm getting up at 6 in the morning and going to fucking work with a load of arseholes. It's too special for that. It's like your own mystical getaway from all the worries of life.

In what way can you carry it into everyday life? Do you walk up your workmates and say "Isn't nature wonderful, isn't love the meaning of it all"?

I remember Alan Watts used to say "When you get the message hang up the phone". He stopped taking psychedelics, presumably because he thought he'd "got the message" and then drank himself to death on whiskey. If he'd kept taking psychedelics for his escape instead of whiskey perhaps he'd still be alive now.

 

[Enter Galactic]

What the OP is trying to incorporate is the capacity that he has (brought out by psychedelics) to rid himself of what seems to be social anxiety. It's not that he wants to carry the magic of psychedelics into his everyday life. He just wants to be able to remove this social wall that he encloses himself in.

You don't need psychedelics to be social OP. They are only helping you to realize you can be. I found this exact same effect while taking 4-AcO-DMT, and have been working on improving my social skills since then (I'm very asocial myself). Remember that it's just removing a barrier that you've created, so you have to work at tearing down that wall yourself. It's not that they are boosting your personality, they are just letting it come out from behind a barrier that you've built to protect yourself.

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

I agree with Enter Galactic.

Personally, I take the experience into everyday life by noticing the real and present beauty of existence, and retaining a sense of awe and novelty, as well.

 

[HeavilySedated]

What the OP is trying to incorporate is the capacity that he has (brought out by psychedelics) to rid himself of what seems to be social anxiety. It's not that he wants to carry the magic of psychedelics into his everyday life. He just wants to be able to remove this social wall that he encloses himself in.

You don't need psychedelics to be social OP. They are only helping you to realize you can be. I found this exact same effect while taking 4-AcO-DMT, and have been working on improving my social skills since then (I'm very asocial myself). Remember that it's just removing a barrier that you've created, so you have to work at tearing down that wall yourself. It's not that they are boosting your personality, they are just letting it come out from behind a barrier that you've built to protect yourself.

This makes good sense to me. Sure, sometimes I feel like life could be so much more beautiful if we could just be on a non-ending trip cycle. However, the beauty in psychedelics lies within the unnatural, seemingly unfeasible burst of emotions.
Now I'm not really talking about social or general anxiety here. I used to be an anxious person in the past, but I already passed that bridge. I'm talking more about this barrier between my consciousness and my emotions. I tried psychotherapy and various self-help stuff, but nothing seems to shift my emotional center like psychs do. Am I being unrealistic? Perhaps. But when I ask myself how to be a feelings guy, psychedelics seem to provide the most convenient answer. My life is defined by taking shortcuts whenever I can, and while it usually backfires, sometimes I do get my way in this.

Anyway, the problem here is lack of emotion in my daily life. Emotion is so dear to me because it literally makes or brakes me. If I feel good about myself, nothing can bring me down. My goal is to find my way to my emotional peak and learn how to stay there. The lack of emotion is purely psychological - when life was too tough on me I would make myself numb to the world. Gradually I closed up to everything, and today when life is actually shining bright on me I feel as though I was left with this crippling handicap, a remnant of my troubled childhood years. The psychedelic experience opened up this whole new array of emotion, and so my question would be how do I find my way back in there without having to take a drug.