Yeh the hallucinogen thing never made quite a lot of sense to me either. But after I started reading about how ibogaine works by "psychologically interupting" an addiction I started to look back on my very few experiences with hallucinogens in the past.
And I do actually remember even when I had terrible experiences (like with salvia) they DO in fact have incredibly profound influences on the way you think. I remember for like a week after I did the salvia I felt this weird sort of "psychological glow". A lot of things that were confusing before all a sudden made sense. I'm not quite sure how psychedelics have this effect, when the experience itself can be confusing and sometimes even traumatic. But they take you sooooo far out of reality, that it seems your paradigm actually shifts on it own just because nobody is actually "beind the wheel" when you're on them.
I'd come back to sanity, and I'd feel so clearheaded, like things were so simple, and I'd have no real clue why I felt that way. So I do definitely see how it could be useful for some, just that after a week or 2 I'd usually revert right back to my old ways of thinking/looking at life. I also know that ibogaine allegedly creates a state of "intense psychological introspection", a state where everything in your life makes sense, and you can see all the solutions to your problems clearly, but I still think most people would just revert right back to who they were before the experience.
Or maybe I just haven't done psychedelics enough for it to be a permanent shift in thinking. And it also kinda of scares me that maybe my mind will take a shift that winds up making things worse. You can't always assume its impact will be "positive", as its a very unstable/subjective experience, so thats why I don't really entertain doing them anymore. Not to mention that a lot of people I meet now and days who have heavily abused psychedelics, all seem like they're are completely out of their mind. It almost seems like taking your entire psyche, putting it into a slot machine, and just randomly hoping it comes out better than before. Sounds a bit too risky for my tastes.
