This is a very interesting question I think, I have been thinking about it a while but haven't had time to respond. I am actually just coming down from 300mg K (spread out over a few hours) and 20mg Psilactin earlier in the day so my thoughts may not be as lucid as I would like but I will do my best to respond in a way that this question deserves.
Honestly as a big fan of dissociatives in general I can really identify with a lot of what you are saying - specifically, in regards to the feeling of being who you really are when on dissociatives, and like dissociatives temporarily unlock this version of yourself, and like the non-dissociated version of yourself is actually an expression of the dissociated self but encumbered in some ways by the quirks of our self-doubting, anxious, threat-seeking human default. Or as you put it -
you said:
It's literally like I'd be who I really am, or whoever I'd like to be, maybe..
I actually really like this quote, not just because it resonates with me as a feeling I have also had, but also because of the "maybe"... that "maybe" is the ever present question that any dissociative user can identify with this... IS this who I really am? Or could this be a drug-induced delusion?
I think there are several things going on here which warrant their own discussion, but I will try to clarify things as I see them (obviously that's all any of us can really do) - firstly I think that there is doubtless some truth in the idea that the dissociated version of yourself IS who you really are, unencumbered by unhelpful anxieties which themselves are generally a result of unavoidable circumstance. We can envision a future where human psychiatry is such an exact science that such unhelpful anxieties - which often really only develop through a quirk in the way our minds evolved, which is just not ideally suited to our modern, technologically advanced human societies - can be simply "switched off", thus instantly curing the sufferer of these unfortunate afflictions. Given that that future has not yet materialised however, the end result is still achievable, but through a more drawn out process - I'll return to this point in a moment.
The second thing of course is that dissociatives are
imperceptibly switching off various parts of your waking brain, which has the
perceptible side-effect that the anxieties, self-defeating false beliefs or habits of thought that
keep you from being the person you want to be usually are also gone. However, dissociatives can be considered I think to be a somewhat blunt instrument in this regard, and what systems they are switching off cannot possibly be obvious to the dissociated subject - I could go on here but to avoid stating the obvious and probably a paragraph of stream-of-consciousness type thoughts on the nature of "self", I'll just say that it may be that there are some things being switched off that actually if you could look at things objectively you would like to keep switched on.
Ultimately, evidence suggests that dissociatives are habit forming and addictive, but the mechanism of this addiction I think is a very interesting one because it is pretty much entirely going on in the mind, and it would probably not be too far off to suggest that the same mechanisms that might lead one to think that the person that they really are on dissociatives IS who they really are is what causes people to develop actual delusions... a la John Lilly, ECCO, etc. On the flipside though, as I mentioned I think the side effects of a dissociated state, can and do allow in some cases for a truer expression of the "real self", so to speak, so if this is the sole reason for the addictiveness of these substances rather than some darker subconscious machinations (which I would not entirely rule out) then, well, that's just a pretty macabre reality I guess.
Anyway... not to get too off the point I was trying to make. I think dissociatives ultimately can be useful as tools to show yourself who you are when unencumbered by some of the quirks of our fortuitously over-evolved monkey minds, as long as you remain always cognisant and aware that
your perception of yourself is not always reliable. This is a double edged sword I think - on the one hand, all the limiting beliefs that hold you back when you're NOT dissociated are probably not an accurate reflection of reality, and when dissociatives show you this, it can be helpful! On the other hand, just as a general rule when you're under the influence of anything your own judgement about who or what you are, or who or what you
want to be, may not be accurate - as much as it seems so at the time.
However the point I am getting to is that I have often thought that the dissociative state shares a lot of similarities with mindfulness achieved through meditation. The state of being "in the moment", "Zen", "mindfulness" or whatever term or concept is applicable. I think dissociatives are a temporary shortcut to this state, and also generally tend to be quite ego-reinforcing, unlike other psychedelics. I think this ego-reinforcement may be just a side effect of being dumped directly into a mindful, objective state of awareness of who you are and your own thought processes. Seeing oneself as who you are, especially if you are by nature a fairly anxious person, can have an acute ego-boosting effect. But, as any accomplished meditator or monk will probably tell you (I am neither so someone correct me if I'm wrong) reliance on the ego for your sense of self-worth is a trap because the ego is fragile, and as soon as the dissociatives start to wear off your ego will acutely feel all the negativity from the mental-scatteredness of the aftereffects, compounded by the creeping re-emergence of all the brains myriad of self-doubt subroutines slowly coming back online.
So - finally - I would say that YES, a "dissociated" state IS achievable without dissociatives - if by "dissociated" we mean a sustained state of inner serenity. Although I know of no other way than practising meditation and cultivating mindfulness. There are a lot of good and helpful ideas in Buddhism I think, specifically orientated around the idea that our whole sense of self is generally a complete illusion.
Personally, I have pretty much accepted at this point that dissociatives are just pure hedonism for me, although I would say that they have been helpful, just in the sense of showing me
A version of myself that I could be (whether or not that was or is the "real" me, and whether or not such a term even makes sense). I think it's important to be aware of their ego-reinforcement tendencies though - even if it's not always obvious how to mitigate these dangers, and if, indeed they even are dangers if some kind of low level ego-reinforcement is helpful to us - just being aware of them at least is important.
In general the kind of dissociation that you can achieve without dissociatives - by which I mean,
the ability to dissociate ones sense of self and self worth from any involuntary chatter and emotional turbulence going on within their own mind - is going to be ultimately superior to the dissociation that any dissociative drug can induce, which at present, again, function only as blunt instruments, and do not
really give us this aforementioned ability, they just conveniently switch off the parts of our mind that we would sometimes like to ignore. But, the road to achieving this ability takes practice and unavoidable suffering and hardship along the way.
That's not to say that some kind of novel pharmacological agent might one day offer a shortcut to such a state of inner serenity, or that, indeed, we might genetically rewire ourselves so that such traits are hard-coded into the human psyche. Both these things would obviously be objectively great things for the human race - but in lieu of either of these things having happened yet, sustained practices of meditation and cultivating mindfulness are the only ways that I know of.
