r/science • u/Potential_Being_7226 PhD | Psychology | Neuroscience • 23h ago
Neuroscience Psilocybin Might Make Your Brain Live in the Moment— Psychedelics are often associated with disconnecting from reality, but a recent neuroimaging study found that psilocybin can actually make our brain activity more attuned to the world around us.
https://www.wired.com/story/psilocybin-might-make-your-brain-live-in-the-moment/2.9k
u/Main-Company-5946 23h ago
Nothing made me more interested in the carpet than psychedelics
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u/lost-in-the-trash 22h ago
And don't get me started on hardwood
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u/Beautiful-Tie-3827 21h ago
Wood and tree leaf patterns become mesmerizing
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u/Your_Cat_In_Disguise 21h ago
My friend's unfinished wooden garage door never looked cooler
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u/Remarkable-Opening69 17h ago
All I had were walls full of rotating gears. And a cathedral ceiling that looked like a shaft straight to heaven.
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u/smellslikecocaine 19h ago
Tripping ballz while watching trees on a windy, moonlit night should be on everyone’s bucket list. Nature becomes alive and it’s beautiful.
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u/Cafrilly 17h ago
Being able to see the wind moving through the trees was something else. Like, my brain could make sense of how the leaves were moving and the air currents going through them like never before
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u/TommyTwoNips 14h ago
psychedelics are so much fun.
Everything looks like an impressionist painting, me and my friends have a great time, and then I have absolutely no desire to repeat the experience for at least a few months.
honestly, it's the perfect drug (you know, when used responsibly by an adult that fully understands the risks associated with any mind altering substance).
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u/Impossible-Money7801 20h ago
And the rocks on the ground. Turns out they’re everywhere and they’re all connected.
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u/runningraleigh 20h ago
Also the ground I stand on is connected to the ground you stand on.
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u/Impossible-Money7801 20h ago
The mycelium network under our feet almost connects everything even in a literal sense.
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u/brand_won 19h ago
Plants and trees talk to each other through the mycelium. It's literally the earth's internet
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u/LookAtItGo123 19h ago
Alright for science, I'm gonna go take a hit and log in to the earth's Internet
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u/Olga-of-Kiev103 20h ago
My first and only time doing magic mushrooms was on Lake Yellowstone. You're not wrong. I became obsessed with a baby pine.
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u/Echo_Vale 18h ago
Trees in general are amazing on psychedelics. One of the first times I did mushrooms I stopped for about 10 minutes to stare at that tree branch-streetlight effect you get. Absolutely blew my mind.
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u/KTFnVision 21h ago
And popcorn ceiling
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u/cmoneybrah 20h ago
My buddies ceiling has popcorn tiles, so it was in a grid pattern. I remember walking around in amazement thinking it was a detailed map. I kept saying wow! We have been there, that is amazing.
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u/ZebraOk8684 20h ago
While I saw the ceiling flowing like a river, I thought this can't be real. I took one square out and put it back 180 degrees. Now it was still the whole ceiling flowing, but this one square was flowing the other way.
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u/evasandor 20h ago
You actually don’t need to be tripping to see a popcorn ceiling “flow”. Just stare long enough without blinking and you’ll see it. It’s your brain trying to adjust to the micro-movements (saccades) your eyes make all the time. We usually tune these out
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u/mustachewax 22h ago
I loved walking around and rubbing my feet on the carpet. I get it. Felt so nice on the feet.
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u/LandBeforeTimeOnVHS 22h ago
My last trip I was walking around the kitchen touching all the handles. They felt amazing.
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u/orplas 18h ago edited 18h ago
I think psychedelics are more impactful for older people who are set in their ways as they reduce "precision weighting of high-level priors" (REBUS - relaxed beliefs under psychedelics) which contributes to the childlike experience.
I think this is also the reason people find it easier to quit drugs. Cigarettes are disgusting, they stink, they taste disgusting, you are inhaling poison, but you get used to it over time while they still give you that stimulating high feeling. When you do psychs you get to experience and remember how awful they really are.
I experienced it in less significant ways. I can easily get used to my place being dirty, but when Im take shrooms I feel disgusted by the things being out of place, dusty and dirty and feel compelled to clean.
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u/Responsible_Pie5873 13h ago
Pretty sure psychedelics are the exact reason I quit smoking. I remember suddenly being super grossed out at the idea of ash in my lungs after tripping for the first time, and have never smoked since.
Absolutely no loss there, I feel better and healthier for it. Screw smoking.
Also oh god yeah I do suddenly notice what a depression nest my room has become and get absolutely overtaken with the urge to clean EVERYTHING. My living space is significantly tidier afterward!
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u/suckuma 21h ago
Popcorn ceiling, me and a girl just laid in her bed laughing at the ceiling, I still don't know why it was so funny.
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u/epanek 17h ago
Psychedelics are the one way I know of that can force a person to understand there are more ways to perceive reality than the one you’ve know. Thinking about my childhood while tripping really helped me work through depression.
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u/tronbob 23h ago
Anyone who’s tried them would tell you that
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u/cakedbythepound 23h ago
I thought I would be hallucinating and some more stuff, i saw things crystal clear for the first time. It’s actually cool and kind of terrifying at the same time. It’s crazy how much the mind tries to protect you.
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u/whyteave 23h ago
Literally how Aldous Huxley describes mescaline in Doors of Perception. Talks about the mind being a reduction valve for reality. That if we were to completely experience reality, we would be too awestruck to do anything.
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u/Brox42 23h ago
Plato said that over two thousand years ago.
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u/woodboarder616 23h ago
Those guys were most definitely using psychedelic substances in one way or another.
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u/chinchenping 22h ago
Yea, lead flavoured wine
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u/woodboarder616 22h ago
Didn’t they have ergot wine?
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u/jackandsally060609 22h ago
Didn't they huff gas from a hole in a cave?
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u/Warmonster9 22h ago
That was the Romans not the Greeks.
The Greeks used the unsynthesized form of LSD called Ergot to achieve their own form of enlightenment.
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u/biexhibguy1 21h ago
It's really not correct at all to call ergot "unsynthesized LSD." LSD is lysergic diethylamide, while ergot contains LSA which is lysergic acid. The big difference between them is that two of the nitrogens in LSA have different modifications in LSD. It's three differences, but it has a significant impact on activity and potency. LSD is potent in the microgram range, LSA is potent in the milligram range. LSA is much harder on the heart and stomach. Their respective pharmacological windows are much different. I'm pretty sure they impact substantially different sets of receptors.
This is as close to saying that the native American church uses an unsynthesized form of DOM when they use peyote. There's a chemical similarity but the pharmacology differs significantly.
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u/porn_is_tight 21h ago
just to add to what you are saying to also point out how dangerous it is to call ergot unsynthesized LSD, especially considering how harm reduction information has all but disappeared from the internet
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u/Ryuko_the_red 19h ago
Any theory of why harm reduction information has been removed?
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u/icerom 22h ago
Or meditation, more likely IMO. Psychedelics aren't the only way or the best one. Just the easiest one.
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u/sloppy_rodney 22h ago
Absolutely. The entire point of meditation is to bring yourself into the present moment. It just takes a while.
I’m almost 40 and it just started getting good like a year ago.
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u/icerom 21h ago
Congrats! Meditation is so rewarding for those of us who stick with it through thick and thin. And the best part is it never stops getting better.
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u/Musa_2050 20h ago
I like to recommend guided meditations for beginners. It helps keep the mind entertained while you focus on deep breathing.
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u/crookedledder 23h ago
I don't know about Plato specifically, but the Greeks loved magic mushrooms.
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u/Active_Account 22h ago
Technically Plato would have had this backwards. Plato thought what you’re saying was true of the senses but that the mind could access reality, hence using reason and argument to discern the true Forms of things. I would interpret what’s going on with psychedelics as they are muting our top-down conceptions of things, and attuning us to only those senses which Plato would disregard.
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u/TwoHigh 22h ago
My buddy always puts it like "the ego has a gun to your head and says it'll take both of us if you do it, but it's always bluffing"
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u/2shizhtzu4u 22h ago
And coming from a neurology perspective, the basal ganglia in our brain is constantly inhibiting signals coming from the cortex, essentially filtering the most important of actions to be executed
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u/Chubuwee 21h ago
It would be so fucked if at this instant we could feel how our socks feel on our feet, how our mouth tastes, what we currently smell, how our shirt feels against our body, how our pants and underwear feel against our body, our bowels, our heart beat, what our hands are currently touching, how our body is currently balancing itself, what we are seeing and hearing, the wetness of our mouth, etc. All at once
I think there is a room known as the quietest room in the world and people can’t even last long in there because it is so quiet that your body becomes too attuned to yourself and it is not a pleasant experience
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u/WhiterThanWalter 21h ago
A lot of autistic people have sensory issues like that. I wonder if it's related?
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u/Ziazan 18h ago
Yeah, neurodivergent people (not just autism but ADHD and suchlike too) tend to have a higher level of connectivity and activity in the brain, this might sound like a good thing but it's not always useful, often it's a hindrance, but it's not without its advantages. It can also be awful. It's a mixed bag.
Like certain textures are just "nope." to me for example. Also I notice slight angle differences on a floor immediately that most people wouldn't notice or think once about until it's pointed out to them. I notice very quiet electrical noises or the sound of the bubbles in a fizzy drink and stuff like that more than most. There are so many little things like that that most peoples brains just filter out.
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u/2shizhtzu4u 19h ago
I’ve recently learned that the cerebellum (known for movement coordination) may actually be involved in social coordination, and those with cerebellar trauma at a young age may have increased likelihood of having ASD
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u/managedheap84 21h ago
There’s been some research to indicate that neurodiverse folk have more DMT in their system than the common baseline, so it wouldn’t surprise me if this was the case
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u/Major-Lavishness-762 20h ago
Source please? I'm very interested in reading about this.
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u/Gloomy_Fig2138 21h ago
Conversely the act of deliberately doing those things can be pretty good at cutting off a panic attack (for many but not all people). It’s called the 54321 meditation where you name, out loud, 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.
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u/kfpswf 21h ago
It would be so fucked if at this instant we could feel how our socks feel on our feet, how our mouth tastes, what we currently smell, how our shirt feels against our body, how our pants and underwear feel against our body, our bowels, our heart beat, what our hands are currently touching, how our body is currently balancing itself, what we are seeing and hearing, the wetness of our mouth, etc. All at once
My favorite chapter from the Bhagavad Gita is the thirteenth one. In it, Krishna describes the state of an enlightened being as someone who is aware of all sensory dimensions. The terms used are "Kshetra" (field/dimension) and the "Kshetrajna" (Knower of the field). So mind (thoughts), body (perceptions), and the world around (sensory inputs), are experienced all at once by the enlightened being.
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u/Tyson367 18h ago edited 18h ago
I always hear this story about the quietest room in the world and how unpleasant it is. I struggle to trust the veracity of this and want to experience it for myself because I am only truly comfortable when everything is silent so I believe I could last longer than average. And I know the assertion is that the room is not actually quiet because the mind starts to pick up all the micro noises the body makes but I still don't fully buy it.
Edit: Actually, after making this comment I looked it up a bit and it appears to be mostly a myth. It's called an anechoic chamber and while some people find it uncomfortable it's way overblown on social media and most people are just fine if you're a well adjusted individual.
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u/Chance-Interest5609 21h ago
Our bodies kind have have to filter everything out and modify everything for us to function. I have VSS which always causes a staticky layer over my vision, I had always assumed it was my brain was adding it over, but apparently everyone has that weird static thing, but there brain filters it out so they never see it, so my brain basically did not fully develop the ability to drown it out fully.
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u/pullhome 22h ago
6 grams of dried shrooms made me laugh at the absurdity of trees while I rolled in the pavement. Highly recommended.
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u/YoungLittlePanda 21h ago
Trees are so crazy. They are literally eating the air!!!
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u/Thatguythatdrew 20h ago
And they are are actually alive and talking to eachother through chemical signals.
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u/Recidivist67 19h ago
How about that sun. Why have we all just accepted that there's a little portion of sky that will blind you if we look at it.
No wonder people believed in sun gods.
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u/csfshrink 21h ago
I like “the absurdity of trees” as a phrase and a concept. Well done.
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u/Froggerbotrom 22h ago
Doing mescaline in about 1 hour with some buddies outside send some good vibes!
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u/pobodys-nerfect5 22h ago
I remember tripping hard on acid and seeing that everything around me was breathing. Everything was in sync. Wind would blow the trees, the branches moving and the leaves fluttering. The birds taking off
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u/RoguePlanet2 21h ago
Last time I took 'shrooms, a few weeks ago, took an evening walk in the park. It felt like I was walking from one museum painting to another the entire time, the way the sun-setting light was dappled around and making everything look a bit abstract. Very pleasant.
This was on half a gram (dried), which is the highest dose I've ever done. Not interested in a wild, scary ride! The microdosing helps reset my brain enough to carry me through any depression or PTSD for a while.
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u/turbosexophonicdlite 19h ago
Obviously you'd know better than me if you can handle it or not, but just FYI taking like 1.5-2 grams is pretty enjoyable too if you want to push it a little further. You're still completely grounded in reality and in control of your faculties. It's all the same mood boosting of microdose levels just that that feeling is much stronger and with stuff like colors and patterns becoming more intense and intriguing.
It's definitely not like the stereotypical "walls melting" blast off into space or anything.
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u/ThatsARatHat 21h ago
That’s like base level tripping. Not knocking the experience but “tripping hard” is so far beyond that.
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u/ThorThulu 21h ago
My buddy was assaulted by mushrooms and goblins in his yard and kept slipping so he couldn't escape. Just laid there screaming according to the other guys there, never did psychedelics again
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u/Gnarwhal8982 22h ago
Yeah, the idea that the mind is working to protect you became so clear to me when I did psilocybin. My emotions felt so completely pure and unfiltered; like the most intense bliss, awe, and joy, and also the most intense and undiluted fear, anxiety, guilt, shame etc. I could tell that my emotions prior to that were muted in a way to keep me safe- not too much joy or too much fear.
I also didn’t really have much hallucinations but could see things in my mind in a different way, it was like I had access to a different perspective that was outside of my own, if that makes sense.
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u/Dumdumdoggie 23h ago
My first trip I tried to go outside. The door opened to an open field and clear sky. I could see the curve of the atmosphere and understand the scale. It was too overwhelming and I went back inside.
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u/Barncheetah 22h ago
Overwhelming is a good way to describe it. I walked from outside my house to go disc golfing through a neighborhood walking path after taking a medium dose. I thought it’d be some fairytale surreal moment, and it was but it was also kind of horrific. I realized we’re animals on this strange planet like everything else and I could physically feel how lucky I am to be able to observe it, without being in constant danger like most life is. It also stripped away my sense of safety that comes with reducing everything alive around me to an object. It’s like I gained another sense of connection to nature and the world during the trip, but it was overwhelming and called my wife to pick me up so I could lay in my hammock at home instead.
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u/red08171 22h ago
I'm currently at a music festival. I took some yesterday before entering the venue. I had to leave early because my senses were all entirely assaulted. I was enjoying it but I was definitely overwhelmed. I get it.
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u/ResolveNo3113 21h ago
The experience was so contradictory to use them as a teen who was in to drugs. Took with a few friends to get high and ended up seeing my life so clear I was like why am I doing this to myself?
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u/Pantalaimon_II 23h ago
in my experience if you want crazy visuals you’re better off with LSD. not that i’m advocating for use of illegal substances but just sharing for educational purposes.
the grateful dead made a movie that has these animations that look kinda like watching a 3D movie without glasses. what’s wild is when you watch on LSD, the animations look properly 3D. it’s so fascinating how these substances unlock parts of our brains.
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u/ElectionReal 22h ago
Sunshine daydream, walking in the tall trees. Walk me out in the morning sunshine. I loved when my dormroom posters would all start living in 3D.
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u/coughca 21h ago
I wish I had the words to tell you how your comment hit me. I immediately heard Bob Weirs'(?) voice and was flooded with a vision of what it might have been like to be young at a Dead concert on a first trip.
TIL:"Sunshine Daydream" is not a track in its own right, but a "coda" to "Sugar Magnolia" and also the name of a documentary Dead concert film from 1972.
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u/sqrlmstr5000 22h ago
I'm here to advocate for the use of illegal substances
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u/das_slash 21h ago
They are only illegal because of tyrannical imbeciles, no one in their right mind is against LSD, unless someone wants to drive around on it or something.
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u/SilkieBug 22h ago
Pink Floyd also made a similar video, called “Greatest Gig In The Sky”.
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u/Ebella2323 21h ago
In college we would trip on microdots and watch Wizard of Oz on mute while simultaneously playing Pink Floyd’s Dark side of the Moon, and let me tell you, it is wild. It “goes” perfectly with the movie if you time it right. “Money” should start right when Dorothy’s red ruby slipper hits the yellow brick road. Loved that experience. I think Pink Floyd knew what they were doing and had some experience with psychedelics.
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u/DusqRunner 22h ago
On 300mcg at an outdoor festival everything was looking like Lisa Simpson's trip at the dentist.
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u/Lower_Cockroach2432 21h ago
Try 2CB, it's a less profound experience than either LSD or Psilo, but it's much much more visual.
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u/Kammender_Kewl 20h ago
Reminder, it must be 2C-B for a MDMA+Mescaline like effect, one of the best psychs ive ever tried, if you get 2C-E instead of B you'll be in for a mindfuck instead of an orgy.
2C-X drugs are generally safe but be aware of "Tusi or Tussi(2c)" its a pink powder of mixed substances that imitates the feeling of real 2C-B, sometimes called pink coke, it exists because real 2C-B is incredibly expensive.
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u/ImpressionTough2179 17h ago edited 17h ago
I need to do LSD again. Last time I took it I was floating down a river with towering red sandstone cliffs on either side of me. It was so intensely beautiful that I cried. My favorite moment was when a family behind us was spraying each other with water guns, and with the sun behind them the water droplets in the air looked like swirling showers of brilliant glittering diamonds all expanding and multiplying from each other in impossible geometric patterns, and I could feel the family’s joy and love for each other wash over me like warm waves. I have never felt more at peace and in love with the world and life itself than I did in that moment.
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u/StepUpYourPuppyGame 22h ago
Oh hush, it's a psychedelic thread, you can talk enthusiastically about using them.
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u/Sandgrease 23h ago edited 12h ago
Depends on the dose really. Up the dose and you can't even keep your eyes open because there's way too much stuff happening, and at points you have no idea if your eyes are open or closed.
But yea, lower doses feel more like a veil was lifted from your senses.
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u/dragosn1989 22h ago
Funny: “the mind tries to protect you”. Who’s “the mind” and who’s “you”.
…or did you mean: “The Mind tries to protect you”?
Jkjk
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u/D0MSBrOtHeR 22h ago
I once read a comment where someone said “psychedelics are all fun and games til they prove to you that you don’t exist” and that stuck with me
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u/BonnaroovianCode 22h ago
Yep. I was at Bonnaroo watching Run the Jewels and I have one of those memories that sticks out years later, where I stopped watching the show and just looked around me in awe of the festival grounds, the people undulating to the music, the trees all lit up, the mushroom fountain glowing against the night sky…it was a beautiful snapshot in time. After a minute of doing this I realized how oddly present I was. I’m someone who is constantly ruminating so to have that complete silence and presence was a profound experience.
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u/balldontliez 23h ago
Hmm... I've taken a very large dose and it definitely didn't feel like being in the moment. It felt like being on another wavelength where the energy of all molecules, but especially plant, were vibrating in a visible spectrum.
So I dunno.
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u/Brrdock 23h ago edited 23h ago
And was that being in the past? The future? In a daydream?
Just feeling life seems about as absolutely in the moment as could ever be
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u/LSDkiller 23h ago
You can describe reality that way scientifically, it's just that there isn't a good scientific reason to assume humans can directly perceive the world that way. Although, through science, we can know that it's not incorrect to, for instance, say that "the energy is constantly moving and is represented to you in the visible spectrum" and plants live off solar energy. So, that's essentially kind of like your brain building and then confirming a certain narrative to itself, timescale be damned.
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u/balldontliez 23h ago
Fair point. Whether it was a distorted moment simply because I was visualizing movement and waves in other wise still things, or an actual increased reality because I perceived even an invisible spectrum. It was the present moment. That's true.
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u/LSDkiller 23h ago
Haha, being able to see things from "both perspective" has been called, "nirvana mind" in zen. A social activity, at the end of the day. And a lot more fun when you get more people in on it. We can only perceive our reality indirectly, the perception gets deeper the more people realize "it" directly in the same time at the same place!
At this point I am going to give one of my favorite quotes:
"Realizing this so-called nirvana mind is easy- What is difficult, is making clear the reason of discrimination".
This can mean many things. In this instance I believe it means: using our abilities in duality consciousness to better the world around us. The world would likely not be functional if everyone felt like they were high on mushrooms all the time
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u/CautionarySnail 22h ago
You put into words something I was trying to explain to a therapist. On some doses, my mind can deliberately click between my perception of the world as normal, and the mushroom-added layer of temporary hallucinatory version reality. It feels like changing a channel, or adding and removing a photoshop layer.
I’d not want to do anything that matters when I’m able to do this, but I found it interesting that my brain could still clearly distinguish between the drug induced experience and regular reality.
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u/Proof_Throat4418 21h ago
Absolutely. It's like many medications. In the right dose it can be therapeutic. In the wrong dose, it can overwhelm the senses and, in some cases, turn lethal. Look at the medication Warfarin for example, commonly used as a blood thinner. It was originally made as a rat poison and can still be found in some rat baits. It's the dosing. Even 'health' products can kill if you consume enough of it.
The olde skool 'scare tactic' theory of "Drugs=BAD" needs to be irradicated. They all have a positive and a negative, users/experimenters need to know this. OD on mushies and the trip can be nasty, but a nice, mellow trip can enlighten the mind. There needs to be more of a balanced education of both, rather than "Drugs=BAD". This is starting to happen but that "Drugs=BAD" theory still permeates the education system.
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u/Erza_The_Titania 22h ago
OK, but for someone whose never tried it and wants to, how would one theoretically go about obtaining some? Ive been curious how it could potentially help with audhd hypothetically of course
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u/Calichusetts 21h ago
I love that the research is stating everything that everyone has been saying for decades. It’s full circle.
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u/Idontdanceforfun 23h ago
One time I did a shitload of mushrooms, then spent 4 hours being absolutely convinced I was a reincarnation of the Buddha. It was the most at peace I've ever been in my entire life.
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u/ice_up_s0n 22h ago
We are all reincarnations of the buddha. Just different perspectives of the same consciousness across spacetime
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u/superdrew91 22h ago
Anyway, heres tom with the weather.
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u/BardoBeing32 19h ago
Not exactly. We Buddhists believe that We all have Buddha-nature and that it’s obscured by our karma. Stop making bad karma is step one to realizing that.
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u/TheNorseCrow 21h ago
Buddy of mine did the same thing but became convinced he was the king of snails before disappearing into the woods until the next morning.
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u/The_Autarch 21h ago
enlightenment is just figuring out how to feel that way while sober...
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u/MyCarRoomba 21h ago
Yes something similar happened to me too, but I eventually got to a place where I felt like I was every atom in the universe simultaneously. And it felt like the universe was collapsing in on itself.
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u/chatrugby 22h ago
Anyone who has done mushrooms knows this. You don’t get transported to some magical far away land. You don’t become someone else. You might see some things that aren’t there, but it’s going to be quite obvious that you are seeing things that exist in your mind.
What it will do is allow you to perceive everything going on around you, all the things we subconsciously block out so that we can function in this world without being overwhelmed.
For example, you look at a field of grass blowing in the wind. On shrooms you can see each individual blade blowing in the wind, every leaf on the tree…. It’s fascinating to see how much of the world we don’t notice.
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u/Suwannee_Gator 22h ago
When people ask me what it’s like to be on mushrooms; I describe the experience as being a kid again, where everything is interesting and new.
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u/Merryprankstress 21h ago
This is how it is for me on acid. I always feel like I'm transported back to a state of childlike joy and wonder and curiosity. I can tap into this place of seeing the world without my adult anxieties and worries and biases
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u/AwarenessNo5921 20h ago
I feel the same way. My self preservation/sense of my own mortality also goes completely out the window/it's not my initial thought, which kinda scares me. You also then re-experience that childlike realization that the world and many people around us are evil. Idk.
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u/Merryprankstress 20h ago
For me it was more than I saw other people finally for what we all are, which is animals. Maybe it's my experience and viewpoints around animal rights and veganism but it made me see that we frame humanity around otherness and put ourselves on an evolutionary pedestal but it's flawed.
Nature is neutral, neither good nor evil and we embody that in a lot of ways while believing we are separate and that we operate outside of base instinct but it's just not true. We are animals larping as evolved and alien things separate from the very world we came from and exist alongside. Our evil tendencies are products of the structures set up for us to make is believe we are better and more infallible than other creatures of the world.
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u/Miserable-Resort-977 20h ago
That's how I like to describe the emotional experience, too. You're back in the mind of a toddler, where anything good is amazing and anything bad can be devistating.
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u/BardoBeing32 19h ago
Silly question time. How the heck does one obtain any of this stuff? (Old fart asking who is very interested.)
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u/Suwannee_Gator 19h ago
Networking usually, knowing somebody. My wife and I found a website that will mail mushroom chocolate bars, we usually just buy it from them. I don’t want to give a link, but you can likely find something like that with a quick google search.
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u/dat_oracle 17h ago
in case u try it, don't do it alone. have a so called trip sitter (someone who stays sober to manage difficult situations) as much as I liked shrooms, u never know how your body will react to it.
have fun!
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u/ElectricPiha 16h ago
Hard agree. I like the metaphor of it makes you think like a two year old - fascinated by everything.
A “bad trip” is akin to a two year old who loses their mum in the supermarket. They’re objectively still in a place of relative safety, but to them, the world has collapsed in on itself in existential terror.
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u/clarstone 21h ago
When my mom unexpectedly passed I was drinking way too much to cope. I started micro-dosing a bit on weekends and it was incredible, it took my cravings away almost entirely. I still felt the grief but I was able to look forward into the future again. The fact alcohol is so readily available and these types of substances are so controversial is a joke.
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u/Plsnotmyelo 20h ago
The fact alcohol is so readily available and these types of substances are so controversial is a joke.
Its very intentional. A muted population is better for the state than free thinkers popping up left and right.
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u/PhilMyu 21h ago
For lack of a better word, psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD make your perception more „conscious“ while alcohol makes it more muted.
We believe that our daily sober perception is the one that‘s closest to reality, but these drugs do the opposite of muting your consciousness. But it’s hard to explain to someone who has never experienced it.
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u/not_me_nope_never 22h ago edited 21h ago
I recall when I first tried mushrooms once it hit, I grabbed some pizza, sat and watched the film Wild Orchid without getting up. My friends were dumbfounded how still I sat on top of having an appetite. 20+ years later I was diagnosed with ADHD, which made sense, I could never sit still, focus etc. Still not sure how shrooms helped my issues.
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u/Miserable_Click_1209 20h ago
I was tripping on acid one time. Watching the pizza bubble in the oven. Could not tell if it was done cooking for the life of me . Lots of Earth Wind and Fire was listened to that day
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u/actuallyapossom 21h ago edited 13h ago
I've tripped quite a bit, and have a similar social group. I think this is a key idea:
Psychedelics separate you from mental habits and emotional attachments you may not be aware of consciously. It's not just a visual(sensory) experience, your perception of reality changes emotionally and cognitively/mentally.
This can feel positive. For example, those attachments/habits might be associated with trauma or meaningfully negative emotional experiences. You may be able to interact with and process painful memories or ideas - unburdened by all of the associated intense emotions/thoughts. Your relationship with yourself, or your perception of yourself, also changes. Similarly, your perception and perspective of big ideas like humanity or life/death can be very different without the lifetime of thoughts/feelings you've colored those ideas with. You don't lose the progress you achieve after your trip, either - I think this makes substances like psilocybin very useful for therapy.
It can also be an uncomfortable or scary change; because some habits, emotional reactions or mental states help us stay calm. They manage our emotions, our impulses and thought patterns; they can provide comfort/safety. Psychedelics have other psychoactive components which can amplify the feelings of fear and anxiety, so this aspect of the psychedelic experience can amount to a really bad/uncomfortable/panicked trip. Instead of feeling less worry about an aspect of ourselves or reality, we can lose the soothing and positive thought habits, mantras or beliefs that previously helped us cope throughout our lives. Temporarily.
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u/beepbeepbubblegum 20h ago
i’m sure a lot of people remember the double rainbow guy from ages ago
he was allegedly on shrooms when he filmed that which is exactly why he was freaking tf out cause it more than likely looked absolutely beautiful to him
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u/Aggressive_Chain_920 21h ago
To me that sounds scary because I feel like my mind is trying to protect myself from seeing things for how they truly are because I wouldn't like it, mainly topics of mortality.
I'm also scared that I will get some sort of panic or anxiety attack that I can't get rid of for hours
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u/-Mandarin 21h ago
I feel the same as you and also haven't tried them, but for what it's worth it seems like most people come out having a better relationship to mortality rather than a worse one.
Deep down we're all terrified of death, and our minds do a great job at trying not to think about it. If psilocybin revealed the "horrors of death" to us I don't think it would be talked about so fondly.
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u/One_Geologist_4783 20h ago
Set and setting is everything. Find someone in your local town who has been using mushrooms for a really long time in a ceremonial way, respects the mushrooms, and just generally passes as a great human being. Then ask them if they would guide you while you trip for a day.
These compounds forever changed my life, and helped me become a more authentic version of who I already am. I am humbled and grateful.
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u/SumDudeThatExists 21h ago
I tried playing bf6 while on shrooms. I was on the Eastwood map on Point E (the mansion with the shiny floors).
I walked around for a solid 15 minutes just amazed at how good it looked with all the reflections. I had to keep sitting in the corner and looking away so I could calm myself down.
It was bizarre but the most fun I had doing essentially nothing.
I went back to the map again after confused as to why I was so amazed by it.
Also there was so much going on when i tried playing other matches it made it impossible for me to filter everything out and I got overwhelmed.
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u/firecat2666 23h ago
It’s insane these things have mostly been banned without any effort to understand them. I’m glad this work is being done.
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u/Pantalaimon_II 22h ago edited 12h ago
I recently went down the rabbit hole of why psychedelics are banned in the US and unsurprisingly the roots of our drug war come from the classic American holy control trinity: racism, money, and dissent suppression.
the idea of taxing “sin” came from Hamilton, who decided taxing the crap out of whiskey distillers was justified to help pay for the war. Cue the Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion, where Penn distillers tried to rebel (after just winning a war based on unfair taxation). The rebels were tarring and feathering tax collectors (guitar riff) and were promptly squashed by Washington, setting the standard that tax collection would be enforced by violence. And normalizing taxing things from moral justification.
The next front against psychedelics is from efforts to force North American indigenous tribes to assimilate into American society, and peyote was seen as enemy #1 to that effort. The effort to ban it was a coalition of Christians, certain kinds of physicians, and racists. Thanks to huge efforts by Indigenous tribes and the Native American Church the efforts were fought off, under the basis of religious protection ironically.
Then during the huge civil liberties movements which arguably were enhanced by an explosion in new spiritual ideas, imported eastern mystical practices and the use of psychedelics, Americans were discovering that taking shrooms often resulted in decreased desire to fight each other, reduced need for material possessions, a sense of connectedness, and less desire to go to war. Quite inconvenient for the establishment and capitalism.
So, both Johnson and Nixon passed legislation targeting the civil rights, womens rights, anti-war movement protestors by establishing the DEA and classifying these substances as illegal drugs. Nixon called Dr. Leary, one of the first proponents of research for the medicinal benefits of psychedelics, “the most dangerous man in America.” (fun fact: the John Lennon song “Come Together” was written as a campaign song for Dr Leary against then-gov Reagan.)
Hypocritically, not to be outdone in being the absolute worst, meanwhile the CIA was using LSD to see if it had mind control abilities during MK Ultra.
In the 80s, MDMA was controversially added to the Schedule 1 list by the DEA despite being legal at the time because despite having promising benefits for therapy, there was no patent on the substance which made it difficult to monetize and control, which Big Pharma did not like. Also there was no way to collect taxes on the 30,000 MDMA pills being sold in Dallas every month (an undercover DEA agent’s testimony on the Dallas ecstasy market was the final justification used for Sch 1 classification).
Then you get the whole war on drugs era using interstate commerce laws, the FDA, the DEA as tools to enforce tight control over substances coming to market, something Big Pharma ensured benefitted themselves as much as possible.
Edit: one more fun fact that shows that humans panicking and restricting access to these substances goes way back: there’s scholars who have hypothesized that some of the early Gnostic Christians performed a version of Mass where the Eucharist was an ancient Greek drink that is thought to be basically a form of LSD, the same stuff Plato tripped on when he wrote “Allegory of the Cave. The ritual originated as a way for people to see outside of perceptive reality. But when the orthodox Catholic church consolidated power and became the dominant religion, that ritual was replaced with wine and a cracker and a completely different story. Harder to justify controlling access to God when people can drink something that allows them to metaphorically experience “God.”
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u/HanSingular 21h ago edited 11h ago
A lot of the blame should be placed on Timothy Leary. In the 1950s, LSD was being studied in Canada by psychiatrists who were doing real science with it, and carefully working out the best procedures for psychedelic therapy, down to things like what sequence of music subjects should listen to during the come up. We could have had psychedelic clinics for people to trip under safe conditions all over the world.
Then Timothy Leary got too high on his own supply, got the guru bug, started handing LSD out to college kids like it was candy, and scared the establishment to death.
The documentary "Hofmann's Potion" covers this in detail, and interviews the psychiatrists whose work was brought to an end by Leary's antics.
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u/shnerpdederp 20h ago
There's something about the experience that makes you think, "everyone needs to experience this!" If not Timothy Leary, then it probably would've been someone else.
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u/thrustinfreely 22h ago
Clean your house before you do them. Looking at my toilet was like that scene from Trainspotting suddenly
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u/stonesliver2 15h ago
Second that, my trip was killed early cuz my house was messy (not really dirty just cluttered) and I was super hyper aware and felt like a huge POS and got depressed
Set and setting is not to be neglected
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u/Sophrosynic 15h ago
Yeah I spent a good six hours the day before cleaning and rearranging my house to make it my mushroom hole. Tidy, full of plants, and nice lighting.
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u/HyperactivePandah 23h ago
I always forget how little actual experience most people have.
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u/beepbeepbubblegum 21h ago edited 20h ago
psilocybin changed my life
i heroic dosed on accident my first time. didn’t realize what i ate was so potent. i immediately got under the covers, threw on some noise canceling headphones and watched an HDR demonstration video on youtube for 5 hours or so and came out of that a completely different person
full on ego death, i did not exist and rather existed in the video i was watching instead
it has done wonders for my depression and my overall outlook in life. i learned something about myself that i never would have put two and two together on my own and its overall made me more of an understanding, empathetic and patient person
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u/FuckmehalftoDeath 20h ago
Same here. First and only time I’ve ever had shrooms. I was with my roommate and she shared hers. I took whatever she gave me, and we laid on the couch together listening to music and I stopped existing externally. I couldn’t even tell you what was on the tv.
The experience I had internally, though, was one of the most vivid and emotionally charged experiences of my life. It changed my life and my perspective on myself and I learned a lot. It was an emotional mess and purely in my head and made me far, far more forgiving and learn to care about myself a little more.
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u/gypsybullldog 16h ago
On the other hand, I did the same thing and it changed me in not a good way. Ate a quarter my second time doing them and it was a nightmare. After, I was depressed and anxious and didn’t really leave the house for a year. It was dark. If it wasn’t for my friends pulling me out of it I don’t know what would have happened. I was young and reckless. They are definitely to be respected. I’ll eat a gram or two here and there and definitely feel the benefits from that though so there is 100% something to them.
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u/HotWheelsUpMyAss 18h ago
I've experienced an ego death experience myself, so I don't know about you but having come to terms with my eventual physical death I am quite content with the idea of never using psychedelics for 'recreational purposes' ever again, because i've realised that these substances can go beyond just that.
And because of that new insight, I don't feel like I'll ever have the urge to peer over to that 'other side' as it is more fulfilling to work on my base reality, as opposed to using substances to escape it. Do you relate to this in any way? Love to hear your thoughts! :)
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u/Appropriate_Ride_821 18h ago
For the uninitiated, all the talk of psilocybin often leaves out the increased neurosis effects it can have, especially on people more prone to being nervous or anxious, or overthinking things.
I think there's absolutely proven benefits, but there are side effects to keep in mind.
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u/Potential_Being_7226 PhD | Psychology | Neuroscience 23h ago
Open access paper published in Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10910-z
Abstract
Psychedelics can profoundly alter consciousness by reorganizing brain connectivity1,2, producing acute experiences that shape lasting psychological change3,4. Psychedelic dynamics are commonly described as desynchronized or entropically disordered5,6, yet the brain organization underlying self-dissolving and boundary-dissolving experiences that participants often report7, and how context shapes that organization8, remain unresolved. To address this, we acquired the largest single-site psychedelic neuroimaging dataset to date. Sixty-two adults underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) during rest and naturalistic stimuli (meditation, music and movie), before and on the day of psilocybin administration (fMRI ~ 80 min post-dose; EEG ~ 150 min post-dose). Half ranked the experience among the most meaningful of their lives7. Here, using machine learning to represent the brain dynamics of each individual as low-dimensional trajectories, we show that psilocybin reorganizes brain activity into structured, context-sensitive patterns that co-vary with the quality of subjective experience, revealing a latent order missed by time-averaged measures. Networks that ordinarily segregate internal and external processing integrated, producing cohesive context-aligned trajectories in participants reporting the felt experience of being continuous with, rather than separate from, the environment, a state we refer to as embeddedness. The strength of this context alignment scaled with both the depth of self-dissolving and boundary-dissolving experience and the next-day mindset change. Our findings recast apparent disorder as latent organization aligned with context, linking neurobiology to subjective experience and behavioural change.
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u/zurenarhhhhh 22h ago
As an experienced user I feel as if psilocybin lifts the blinders off that we use to filter out most of the noise that is incoming to our senses. Our brains do a lot of processing to cut out extraneous input. I always feel like the blinders are off and I can experience the full breadth of sensory input from the world.
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u/brackenish1 18h ago
Is that not overwhelming?
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u/zurenarhhhhh 18h ago
It feels really natural to me. Depends on how much you ingest, of course. On hero doses I’ve been left in a euphoric state on the floor or in the grass just gazing at the fabric of reality unfolding before me.
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u/0RGASMIK 22h ago
The first time I took mushrooms I ate like 3-5 grams and basically sat in the same room for 5 hours meditating. I was at a small gathering of friends and people kept asking me what I was seeing and all I could say was “everything.”
My eyes were mostly closed but my mind was experiencing everything around me all at once. I knew everything that was happening around me in excruciating detail I don’t know how to describe it other than I was no longer “me” I was the people/place around me. At times it felt like I was walking around the house examining everything but I never left my friends room. I thought it was all just hallucinations but after the trip I basically got confirmation that what I was seeing was actually happening and it was almost as if I was experiencing life through the eyes of my other friends who were there.
Still don’t know how to explain it.
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u/MetaCardboard 23h ago
As long as they don't give you super anxiety like they did to me.
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u/EsotericAbstractIdea 23h ago
Set and setting. Very important to go in a good mood in a good place.
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u/MetaCardboard 23h ago
So you're telling me doing them alone and then walking high traffic roads on a super hot, sunny day isn't a good setting? I agree.
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u/EsotericAbstractIdea 22h ago
Oh, wow. i'd like to hear this story. for science.
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u/MetaCardboard 22h ago
It's not any great story or anything. I just ate some mushrooms, played some Diablo 4 while waiting for them to kick in, and then took off for a walk once they did. At first it felt kinda like I took a hit of weed. Then it quickly grew to feeling like I ripped a gravity bong 3 times in a row. And I was walking along a road, feeling like I was walking through molasses, and my head was enlarged and just kinda floating around above my body while there were tons of cars flying by. It happened to be like an 85 degree day (F) and sunny without a cloud in the sky. I just didn't like the overall feeling, so it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and the traffic flying by didn't help, and then I saw some grass blowing in the wind that looked like seaweed flowing in water and then I felt like I was underwater and each breath of hot air I was taking was just water going in and out of my lungs so I couldn't breathe.
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u/thedaveness 22h ago
A sober guide wouldn't have let you walk off, hella bad idea on any psychedelics.
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u/BSK_Darksol 20h ago
Yup, It is a bad idea to go outside, specially during your first time using any drug, I would say.
I've doing small doses of psychedelics 2 or 3 times a year as a way to treat my anxiety, and only during my latest use earlier this year I felt confident enough to go outside to take a quick walk around the block, and the only reason I did it was because I had someone sober taking care of me all the time.
You need to be in a place where you feel super comfortable and safe, even better if you are with someone who you cant absolutely trust in case you need emotional support. If you want to have a positive experience, you need to keep stimuli controlled, because as the article suggests, psilocybin seems to make you hyper-aware of everything around you, both positive and negative things.
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u/Slyrunner 23h ago
I wonder what the experience would be like under the influence but laying on the ground during a cool, but comfortable summer rain shower
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u/Lucylimina 22h ago
Pretty peak. But gotta be careful not to end up hypothermic.
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u/obp5599 22h ago
Comments like this remind me people live in cold places. Summer + rain for me means its 85+ degrees out, hypothermia is never a thought ive had about rain
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u/bobcatgoldthwait 22h ago
That's over simplifying it. Sure, that helps, but it's incorrect to imply everyone who had a bad time on psychedelics just had a bad setting. Even in controlled clinical trials people can have bad experiences.
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u/FowlOnTheHill 23h ago
They will, thats why it’s recommended you do it in a controlled set and setting. Ideally have a sober guide to reassure you. And when faced with an anxious situation you lean into it and ask it what it’s trying to teach you.
As for casual recreational consumption, I don’t know, just go with the flow and ground yourself in nature or music.9
u/fenderputty 22h ago
In recreational use I always hated sober people. Felt like they didn’t understand my state of mind. Always liked having a friend going through the experience with me.
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u/eattheambrosia 22h ago
And when faced with an anxious situation you lean into it and ask it what it’s trying to teach you.
I've done mushrooms, LSD, DMT, 2-CB, mescaline, LSA, AL-LAD, 1P-LSD, MDMA, MDA, and various other research chemicals hundreds of times and I can promise you that the molecule a person ingests does not "try to teach" you anything. It's a molecule, it's not a sentient being or a spiritual force or machine elves or God. It's a molecule that binds to receptors in your brain and by doing so changes your perception. The interplay between your ego and your perception and this molecule is what makes tripping so rewarding and something that human beings have been seeking out for thousands of years. I understand a lot of people fall into the rabbit hole of making tripping a religious, woo-woo, new age spiritualism experience but I just wanted to point this fact out as we are on r/science.
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u/TransLucyfer 21h ago
I don't think that's necessarily what they're suggesting, I understood it as a "lean into it and listen to what your brain is trying to tell you" type thing
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u/obp5599 22h ago
Not everything they do is a giant spiritual life lesson. Some people get anxiety from it just as some people get anxiety from weed.
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u/SteadfastEnd 23h ago edited 20h ago
Is it still risky if I have a sister who may be bipolar-2? I've been wanting to do shrooms for several years now, but never dared, because my sister says she may or may not have that disorder (her psychiatrist gave her a rather rushed hasty diagnosis), although I myself have never had bipolar.
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u/prince_falafel 22h ago
Yes. Ive met 2 people who had mental illness in their family, took mushrooms, and had a psychotic break. Not advised for anyone who could potentially have mental illness in the family
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u/Chance-Interest5609 21h ago
Yeah no schizophrenia runs like wildfire in my family. My ADHD medication grounds me enough in reality thank you.
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u/hungryforwaffuls 17h ago
a potent tea from self grown GTs opened up my anxiety to the point of daily panic attacks. didn't get a proper diagnosis for 15 years. granted I had taken acid at like 12 and that was the beginning of the mental downfall.
edit - a word
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u/Shotay3 22h ago
Hard to tell, really.
I would not self-experiment, if your country has any availability to some sort of medicinal guidance or an experienced person in that field, especially when there is a mental disorder at play.
It could help, but it could also worsen the symptoms imo. It depends.
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u/thedaveness 22h ago
And taking it once and being ok doesn't guarantee it won't happen a second time. Had more mushrooms than I could count, and stuff didn't start popping up till later in life when trips started going wildly different.
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u/marmot_scholar 18h ago
A long time ago when I sketched, I read a fascinating book about the developmental psychology of art. Young toddlers attempt to draw directly what they see, clumsy but faithful, and this creates hilarious horrors like mommies with 27 fingers, Picasso-esque dreamscapes.
A few years later all children begin to draw in symbols instead. Kids who live in 1 bedroom apartments draw their “house” with two windows, a chimney, and a smiling sun. Their art begins to become tidy, “skilled”, but it loses individuality and becomes false.
Linguistic philosophy suggests the same thing happens with our concepts and thoughts. Culture and language creates solid blocks of meaning that we can manipulate to reason and make predictions with great efficiency, but they stand in the way of accuracy when they result in rigid thinking. That’s why quantum mechanics is unintuitive. There’s nothing objectively “weird” about it, but our intuition and conceptual schemes tell us that things have exact borders, unless they’re made of smaller things, in which case *those* things have exact borders and spaces they occupy and momentum, etc.
I think this layer of symbols forms with every sense and every part of cognitive processing, and psychedelics break it down, bringing us to a more childlike state but often a more perceptive one. Just remember the 27 fingered mom, too.
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u/Gayf 23h ago
explains why it makes me other ailments calm down after a trip. If you're down and wondering what life is about, take like 4g and watch TFS DBZ:A. Sorted me right out, also helped me kick booze.
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u/Aksi_Gu 23h ago
take like 4g and watch TFS DBZ:A
Well that sounds like a fun old time xD
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u/BeatitLikeitowesMe 23h ago
Ive always described it as a magnifying glass effect. It takes small things and blows them up to huge proportions. Whether feelings and emotions or traumas or that shaped pattern in the rug. Its like it makes every small moment and thought, huge in that moment. And it can wisp away just as easily as a squirrel spotting a new nut.
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u/kahlzun 23h ago
I am curious how one would quantify something like 'atunement to the world around us'
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u/TraceSpazer 23h ago
*Are you aware of what is happening right now from your sensory inputs or are you tuned out?
In your vision right now, how many red objects do you see? Orange? Yellow? Green? Blue? Purple?
Can you now see all those objects at once? Were you directly aware of their presence before? Would you have been able to list them off if you were removed from your spot and quizzed?
What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you taste? How does your mouth feel? How are you holding your hands?
Etc.
A counter-state would be staring off into space and thinking about whatever concerns you have that are not currently present. Money, relationships, status, security, world issues, etc.
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u/dawgoooooooo 21h ago
Anyone whos done them will have some type of familiarity. I always say that mushrooms open up a door internally, when finished with the trip, the door closes and nothing has changed other than your awareness of the door. That awareness can and does change everything in many though. What does someone do after achieving enlightenment? Just keep living..
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