^ That would be
"pigeon superstition", right?
Yeah it is pretty extreme how extreme the effect can be on sensory perception, thought etc, it's just very critical for many higher brain functions. I don't think that the effects of psychedelics in particular are overinterpreted, this is just apparently an aspect of psychological analysis when applied left and right and our need to try and explain everything.
Plus, if you've tried psychedelics the experiences can be so impressive and feel so full of meaning that it can be easy to forget that big parts of this may be artificial and in a way produced by triggers in the brain that attach meaning / see patterns where there aren't necessarily significant or relevant or intentional ones... just like it seems there is a 'button' for the feeling of novelty which can help make things feel as if you are doing them for the first time again which makes you feel like a child I think.
It's funny but they are also quite honest mistakes and none of us should think we are all that immune to this, you can hardly resist when buttons are pushed (think of the visual example of this: randomly pushed visual buttons apparently makes you see shapes, faces and recognize all sorts of stuff that is not physically there.
Your mind is manifested much more than normally, compared to vision being manifested. There is no such thing anyway as objective vision, but in a trip a much bigger component is 'projected', like last time I thought i saw a lot of spider mites everywhere in my growhouse because I automatically look for them. I was already aware that it may not be real, but this did not really help me stop seeing them. I also deeply regretted this when I forgot for a moment when some erotic urges were ahem.. addressed. Yeah was immediately turned off again lol.
The reason sekio gave about amplification is a major part of this, and what I describe is a form of this too in a way... but I think there are a bunch of these mechanisms that can freak people out, not limited to:
- Overstimulation indeed
- The confusion / not being able to distinguish fantasy from reality so to speak and the fear caused by feeling a loss of control
- Projection of difficult / scary mental content is obviously a major factor in making a trip spiral into 'badness', at higher dosages the difference is the relentlessness and your relative inability to fight it. The confusion and intensity in general can give you the feeling or idea that fighting is an actual option
- Loss of perspective: at high dosages the intensity and overwhelmingness can make you forget not only the unrealness but also the relativity of your experiences making it much more difficult. It's hard to keep anything in your brain that helps keep perspective and without that, your experience and the hallucinations feel like all there is.
Ah I understand you mean the overinterpretation of the tripper, not of people analyzing a trip afterwards.
Yeah: because of the projection / mind-manifestation there is no distance anymore between what you think and what you experience, it becomes one so there is direct feedback. Inability to separate anything like that will lead you to take what happens at face value; plus, like I said, it's extremely convincing... so much so that it is hard to convince anyone later that it might have been illusory / artificial etc. Not everything is artificial and illusory of course during a trip... plenty of mental content has a real basis like a memory, although we heavily edit memories especially when they are influenced by emotion.
The reason for bad trips is not a matter of neuroscience, it's psychology. That is also why it is highly personal (variable) and dependent on mindset and setting/circumstances.
It's interesting though to learn about the neuro effects of LSD in general, look into it: fMRI suggests that it causes reduction in compartmentalization of mental faculties / processes. There is more crosschatter sustained, unusual connections are made, and it is harder to keep things orderly with boundaries.