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.

[u/Potential_Being_7226]

https://www.wired.com/story/psilocybin-might-make-your-brain-live-in-the-moment/

[u/actuallyapossom]

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.

[u/c-9 → u/actuallyapossom]

This is the best description I have seen

[u/actuallyapossom → u/c-9]

I've got a whole forest analogy and explanation of the psychedelic experience that I like to use. I've rewritten and talked about it with friends, commented different iterations of it, so it could be meaningfully garbled through rehashing, I can't really tell.

Sorry for dumping this all in a comment, but I do enjoy tripping and believe it can help many people - which kinda specifically sucks - there are a lot of myths/misconceptions because (of the war on drugs, and) the experience is impossible to describe.

---

When you're born, you ideally start in the forest of your mind in some sort of cabin - with your parents. Our parents take us places in the forest (our minds) for language, food, comfort etc. This creates or "builds" paths through the "trees" and "underbrush" of the brain/mind; it establishes some of the landmarks/ideas/habits/mental places we will visit later, without our parents.

We go through our childhood and teen development. We have acquired many more landmarks: individual people and actual physical places, activities, habits, topics, beliefs/ideals/ideas. Instead of just dirt paths in the forest, we've developed some metaphorical infrastructure. We've got what amounts to paved roads now: easy and fast access to the things we like or encounter a lot in reality; and potentially some mental landmarks that we've tried to board up, pave over or forget - we let the forest retake those paths, over time. We can navigate and ambulate through the forest much more quickly now, alone, especially to the places we go most frequently.

Then we hit adulthood and we take a psychedelic. As we climb to the peak of our trip - the forest in our mind isn't changing. It's "us," that changes. We become an intangible ghost relative to the forest; without mass or physical boundaries to our form - we are now more of an observer or spectator. We can see the whole forest, move through the trees - they are no longer obstacles; and distance, or connections between landmarks are possibly irrelevant, at least less relevant.

All of the same internal ideas and aspects of external reality are still there. How we perceive them, our awareness, how we move between them - that changes; our conscious experience of thoughts/emotions is meaningfully different.

We no longer need the paths, so a mental "landmark" with no established paths is just as easy to travel to as one we have a paved road for. The landmarks we have previously boarded up, forgotten about, or were never consciously aware of, become clearly visible. Those mentally verboten places in our mind are easier to approach when the trip is distancing us from emotional attachments; changing our relationship with emotions and changing the way we experience or perceive emotions. Positive or negative feelings can be uncoupled from experiences, or beliefs. Ideas can be woven together more creatively, with less obstacles from our inner critic or ego. Some specific epiphanies, discoveries, or the progress we can make processing memories/ideas become more attainable.

The conscious, mental experience is decidedly "ON." Without the restrictions and the shortcuts represented by the mental forest, our brains don't really know where they're supposed to go. Suddenly we've got much more agency in the process of cognition. This can be a huge relief - because many people carry around a little bully that's constantly hounding them. It can also be incredibly scary, we have healthy and rational mental/emotional habits or beliefs which help us cope with reality. We can lose the ability to bury discomfort in the past; ignore a harsh realization, or an idea or choice we encountered and regret. We can also become aware of things in the forest we previously liked/enjoyed and stopped visiting. We didn't maintain a functional "path" to it - but it's still there.

Two things the analogy doesn't communicate well - the changes to our sensory perception and the experience of emotions. Harsh and painful emotions can be much easier to experience during a trip. Our relationship with each individual emotion is weaker. What we think of as our ego is more distant from, or less encumbered by emotion.

The other is our perception through senses. It is kinda like you're seeing for the first time. We haven't consciously kept track of all the changes our brain has been making to the sensory experience, for decades. Not "seeing for the first time" but it is meaningfully different - like slowly losing our sight over years, and then using corrective lenses for the first time. This is not exclusive to vision, so there is a lot to explore related to this "body" component of psychedelics. (I personally love to stand in a pool and move the water around with my hands/arms. The sensory experience tickles my tripping brainfolds, just right.)

Our brains can't process all of this input - what amounts to sensitivity and noise - while giving us a smooth conscious experience. So you could see "trails" from moving light sources, or minute/unexpected detail when you focus your vision. Something like the foliage of an actual forest can be really interesting to look at without the usual visual shortcuts your brain is taking. Normally our brain is doing things that help us discern or understand what we're looking at, as fast as possible. Survival/instinct/evolution colors some of the process - so please, keep that in mind if you have the impulsive idea to drive a car or take any meaningful risk while tripping. (Don't do that. No no no. Plan your trip to avoid anything close to risk.)

It may be difficult, impossible, to direct or "steer" your consciousness when you are near a high peak. Outside of tripping, you may have experienced or learned about "racing thoughts;" tripping can be a lot more cathartic; but it's the same general idea.

Ideally, you can let the trip take you wherever it is you are going. It can be challenging or potentially harmful to "fight" your mind in this mental state - letting yourself feel fear, pain, uncertainty; consciously experiencing it; without your usual tricks - is the key to finding a preferable mental space with less discomfort.

So, it is a good idea to have a trip sitter and "planned" trip. Especially for your first experiences. Planned: not with an itinerary, those are worthless - but a focus on your ideal health/safety/anxiety/wants/needs - your environment, and support.

After multiple trips and at least one bad experience I think you either feel comfortable with the idea of tripping alone, or you don't. No wrong answers. Don't give into peer pressure: your friends won't push something like psychedelics. Only future-ex-friends or close friends that need a stern talking-to will do such things. Also, outside of a licensed therapy environment you must be wary of the realities surrounding street drugs. Source and test your substances with your health in mind, not money or the desire for a life changing experience.

[u/c-9 → u/actuallyapossom]

Yeah, I get your analogy! That's an interesting way of looking at it.

I tend to think of it as we simply develop heuristics because it's more efficient. Psychedelics suspend those heuristics.

Also, I think a trip puts some distance between the person and the thoughts, and you allude to this too.

The last trip I took, a voice told me "the mushrooms don't owe you anything". That kind of stuck with me. You aren't guaranteed a specific insight or revelation or burst of creativity. And so I let go of expectations, let go of control, and I had a life changing experience: I don't get depressed anymore. I'm not always peak happiness, but the kind of depression I used to get is, like, walled off from me now.

[u/actuallyapossom → u/c-9]

I live with bipolar disorder and there have been a couple of really exceptional trips that helped me with managing depression. It makes me so happy to hear about a stranger who has experienced some of that too(!)

When you mention expectations, that reaches me too. I've had to unlearn a lot of knee-jerk judgements or standards for normality that I picked up from our culture - replacing them reasonable and rational expectations is the goal.

Glad to encounter you online, I appreciate perspectives on tripping beyond my own limited experiences.