I've always personally been of the opinion that people who don't entertain any thoughts of poking their consciousness in some way are missing the point of life. If you don't ask "why am I here" or "what's this all about" then things get pretty bland pretty quickly. And as soon as you do ask these questions then techniques to properly get into the exploration pretty soon lead you to techniques to expand horizons - therapy, meditation - and yeh, drugs.
Dependency (on anything) is clearly bad but a gentle dabble in order to explore our world, our brains and the relationship between them seems to me to be necessary, healthy and ...well, fun.
That's like saying that only studying the universe with the frequencies of visible light will be more effective.
It's probably the most effective, since we're biased towards being capable of analyzing data from those wavelengths, and the atmosphere is transparent to them.
But why would that imply that we can't use tools that let us view how the universe looks with different wavelengths of light to effectively discover new things we otherwise wouldn't?
I think it is largely a mirage. Certain drugs make us feel like we’ve “broken through” or “figured it all out”. We might write down these incredible insights, hoping to share them with the sober world as a kind of prophet. And the next day we read these words of truth, “Purple banana, awesome blofohga!”
Eh, your brain is a lot more complicated than that.
Your brain is the most powerful filter we've discovered in the universe. You can take immense amount of noise and separate information from it. The issue with these filters is most of the time you don't realize you have them. How you were raised, the people you're around, the culture you're in can all present bias filters that are impossible to see around since you don't even realize they exist.
It may not be 'figuring it all out', but sometimes just having a filter lowered for a bit letting you realize there is another part of the world exists behind it can be a breakthrough.
That was kind of my initial reaction. Like the idea of "breaking through" seems to rely on there being some other coherent world to break through to, ie the basis of most of what we call religion. Which, at least to me, isn't particularly compelling.
But on second thought, we certainly are experiencing some kind of phenomenon of consciousness, even if it's purely an emergent phenomenon of the physical world. And tweaking the experiencing of that consciousness will tend to expose the boundaries of it, even if just at the level of running a fuzzer on a C program or blowing up a balloon too far.
That indeed might happen. Also, something else might happen.
Each individual human doesn't know everything that happens, consciousness + culture just makes it look like they do, as demonstrated in numerous comments in this thread, and all other threads, on TV, in conversation, etc. Reality itself is composed of various mirages.
Some substances help me ask that all important question in the first place. Waking up, brushing teeth, going to work, doing chores, raising kids, family time, rollerblading, gardening, studying... These activities don't help me ponder my existence with the same efficiency as some substances can offer. I mean, who has the time to ask these questions in the first place?!
I'm reminded of a quote from the TV series "Weeds". A bit on the nose, I know, but when discussing peyote in the show, one character said, "It's like 30 years of psychotherapy in one night".
In the real world, the scientific community's recent renaissance around the use of psychoactive drugs like psilocybin or MDMA in therapeutic settings is further proof that "substances" can be good.
If someone doesn't have time to ask existential questions, then how does that person have time to do drugs?
I guess your point is that psychoactive drugs can speed up thinking about these questions. I guess I could see that. It sounds a bit like how Adderall can speed up people's programming ability.
Does having a greater variety of life experience broaden one’s horizon? I hear travel can expand the mind. Reading books by diverse authors on varied subjects is believed to be valuable even if those books aren’t on metaphysics. Why wouldn’t psychedelic experiences be similar to travel or reading or joining the army or falling in love or any other of the many experiences we can know?
I’m not advocating for or against the use of mind-altering substances. But a scientist with two microscopes is going to have an edge over one who dogmatically subscribes to their one and only favourite. Even something as simple as observing the sky turns on knowledge of the failure of our neuro-optical pathways qua optical illusions.
The scientist whose second microscope has fun-house wonky lenses may only have an edge when it comes to discovering canals on Mars, researching N-rays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray), and similar.
Yes. If you don't want to use chemical substances, try fasting without water or food for large periods of time. Highly recommend The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley for you.
Wouldn't a sober study of the universe and history be more effective?
Once upon a time, people painted with oil paints as closely as they could to still life reality. But something was missing. Cue impressionism. After impressionism, an increasingly vanishingly small proportion of the art world tried to paint still life as an arts career and be taken seriously.
And so, then along came cameras. So now why should anyone bother with art at all, wouldn't sober photographs taken by cameras more effective at depicting reality?
(No offense to photographers.)
Not all of life is about being more effective and efficient all the time. Sometimes it's worthwhile to see things in a different way, and to open up new ideas.
We are in agreement. Personally I went through a history phase, and photography phase, and a Wikipedia phase: now I'm doing watercolour. I find art history to be very interesting, but mostly only the generalities.
Hmm. It seems to me that the switch from still life to impressionism was due to a change in the goal.
With study vs drugs, the goal is still the same: find out why we're here. Since there isn't a goal change, it's not clear there should be a strategy change.
The problem is the only reasons to suspect drugs can provide "insight" into "why we are here" arise from mysticism and other basically non-scientific things. How does making your brain work differently help us understand reality? Weed doesn't make the ruler more accurate or change size, it just makes you feel good.
Coffee benefits some people (I'm not sure it really provides me benefit though).
But do psychedelic drugs help? If I want to write code, would a psychedelic drug help there? If not, why would a psychedelic drug help in finding why I exist?
What is the value prop? I usually ask my friends who have tried various drugs about their experiences / how they felt.
I find out for most things I’m able to do them without drugs: introspection, joy, shamelessness, behavioral changes, appreciative for small things, etc.
Yesterday, I just “randomly” texted some of my friends that “I loved them” (they thought I was high). Similarly, when I’m in a club I can dance for 5 hours straight —- almost as if nobody was there. I feel (light) depression sometimes but appreciate that it’s a part of life. Etc.
Maybe the thing I’m missing is an out of body experience or completely “losing control”? But what is the value prop for me is something I can’t answer yet.
The value prop is the dissolution of your own ego.
We experience reality filtered through our senses and our own concept of "self," which is an incredibly limited view of the world. Imagine being able to see/experience a less filtered version of reality, if only for a short period of time.
Or imagine expanding the frequencies of visible light you can see. That alone could certainly be a catalyst to change your perspective on many things.
It's not so much "losing control" as it is "losing unconscious bias." Loss of control is not the goal.
It's also one of those things that you have to experience to understand, and even then, sober you won't completely understand.
But done right, these experiences can be incredibly important to people. If it's not for you, fine, but it's funny how many people with zero experience with these substances think there can't be anything worthwhile there.
The comedown is more taboo than the high can ever be.
I think this is the root of the social calamity. It’s an unwillingness and inability to be candid about the entire process that perpetuates the situation.
Why did that person lose interest in aspects of life that other people find perplexing? Haircuts or hard shoes, for example.
We can’t advance until we’re willing to address and enhance the wax wings.
> The value prop is the dissolution of your own ego.
We experience reality filtered through our senses and our own concept of "self," which is an incredibly limited view of the world.
I think for many, it's that they're not able to do those things you do without some form of help. I know many people with major social anxiety that (for better or worse) use alcohol (modest amounts, none are heavy drinkers) to get over that to dance and talk with people.
They've expressed that the experience has lessened the fear for them, and they're better able to do those things (to a small extent at least) without drinking, but would never have been able to so without the initial nudge.
FWIW, I've got a friend that sounds exactly like you - he's pretty much always sober, but is super outgoing, dances all the time, and talks to anyone enthusiastically. He's sometimes been asked to leave clubs we've been at as bouncers assumed he was high on something, and been refused alcohol as bar staff thought he'd had too much already.
Can I rephrase this to: It’s a completely different experience that people usually can’t find accurate words to describe to someone that hasn’t been there?
Another question I have, If the experience is short-lived, what is the point?
No, you can't describe it. Your senses are overwhelmed in ways that don't have a real-world analog so there is no description that you can convey to others that's in any way accurate. It's the entire point of an altered state and is something that has to be experienced.
Many human activities are short-lived mood alterations.
I see. But to my original question, what is the value prop of experiencing this beautiful indescribable short-lived thing?
The experience itself might be a value prop. But I’m more interested in things that can improve my “normal” life. For context, psychedelics sounds interesting to me cause people say they can affect/improve normal life.
> Many human activities are short-lived mood alterations.
I think of it like this: for psychedelics, the change to your brain chemistry is like changing the hardware architecture leading to changes in software behaviour. The fundamental processes of thought in your mind work differently and so the psychological responses you have to everyday sensory stimulus are completely changed in unexpected ways and you can reach conclusions and insights in thought that you hadn't before. This may be temporary but the experience does change how you understand things once you return to normal brain chemistry function. The simple fact of knowing and experiencing how broad the space of modes is in which your consciousness could operate is very powerful in my opinion.
> If you don't ask "why am I here" or "what's this all about" then things get pretty bland pretty quickly
Better question: Is it possible to escape this rat cage, and if so, how? If I am the universe experiencing itself, how do I perform a sufficiently perfect playthrough against the gradients that constitute its walls?
Nevermind drugs. Let's get BCI -- the end-all, be-all of humanity -- properly off to the races. Invasively or not, get these thoughts out of the rotting confines of our skulls.
If it doesn't work out, whatever. It's not like that's a different outcome than the rest.
> Let's get BCI -- the end-all, be-all of humanity -- properly off to the races. Invasively or not, get these thoughts out of the rotting confines of our skulls.
For what (ultimate) purpose? What's the end goal here? The brain already is a computer. What do you think moving its contents to a different type of computer will accomplish?
Besides kicking off just another "think even faster", "calculate even better", "remember even more" rat race, that is.
We all have heard the reports of people losing their minds on drugs and worse.
The subtle dangers are starting to believe that the fun is in the drug.
Drug enthusiasts often glue together the beliefs formed when under the effects, with the pill and chemical reaction itself.
It's not always as explicit as the hippie who preaches a transcendent drug. Often people start to glue together the internal experience of fun, with the drug, unconsciously.
Unfortunately it can subtly dull your day to day life, if you accidently over-allocate associations of fun with chems.
"If you don't ask "why am I here" or "what's this all about" then things get pretty bland pretty quickly."
I agree with you. I've always thought the drug problem should be a medical matter handled by doctors and that the law, drug enforcement and cops ought to keep out one's lives when it comes to drugs, but things are never that simple.
The range of drugs is phenomenally broad from essentially harmless to extremely dangerous—some drugs you're never going to OD on to others such as Fentanyl that kills thousands evey year.
How one controls all this and brings order to it in a modern complex society seems overwhelming complex. You can't blame non-drug using people for not wanting intoxicated people driving or in charge of machinery etc. And there are just so many variables involved, the problem seems almost insurmountable.
For example, the effect on those who are around a drug user, family, friends, etc. can be devastating. About a year ago a colleague and friend of mine died from long-term alcohol abuse. What made matters worse he was an organic chemist and he knew what the alcohol was doing to him. We couldn't stop him drinking and many of us tried. Yes, he had the right to do with his life what he wished but at the same time we, his friends and colleagues, had to suffer too by watching him deteriorate.
Essentially, drug taking is not a thing people can do in isolation, drug takers are not decoupled from society, their actions flow-on to the broader community in very complex ways.
I don't have a solution, but I certainly know that banning drugs and treating drug users as degenerates and criminals as we have been doing for over 100 years is stupid and very counterproductive.
"I certainly know that banning drugs and treating drug users as degenerates and criminals as we have been doing for over 100 years is stupid and very counterproductive."
> people who don't entertain any thoughts of poking their consciousness in some way are missing the point of life. If you don't ask "why am I here" or "what's this all about" then things get pretty bland pretty quickly.
I didn't get anything "spiritual" out of them. If anything, it made me realize that spirituality is a complete sham
Hot take, the "spiritual" reason for doing psychedelics is this: they hate their own lives and think that some "transcendental experience" will change that
There's only one legit reason for doing them: to get high. The "spirituality" reason is just a bunch of BS. The people who buy into it are the last ones who should be doing them
Step 1 is to get rid of the idea that some people are "criminals" who you shouldn't be interacting with. Over half of Americans have used illicit drugs.
Chances are, someone you already know can hook you up with psychedelics. Try talking to your best friend about it. If he doesn't know, try another friend. You won't need to ask a third friend.
Very wise and courageous men have pondered and bled over the meaning of life for thousands of years.
Some of their best wisdom made its way into books that are still around today. If you read these books, you may find throughout they have something to say about the meaning of life and drug use, if only indirectly. You may find their ideas about the meaning of life have nothing to do with drugs.
Their meaning-of-life wisdom has existed for a very long time. In a word, it's Lindy. Your meaning-of-life wisdom is untested by time, theirs is. Time is the greatest filter. We can't say with absolute certainty that your ideas about drug use and the meaning of life are wrong relative to theirs, but we can say so with a very high degree of certainty. People have been testing your ideas about drugs and the meaning of life since the 60's. Many would say it's not going so well. Contrast that with people who've been heeding the old wisdom - there's a reason it's survived for such a long time.
You're of course welcome to forego the age-old wisdom on drugs and the meaning of life in favor of your own, but it may not work out too well for you.
Even single doses of acid are enough to change your outlook on life _substantially_. Imagine running a db migration on prod while it's live and you have no backups.
This is what consousness tinkering with drugs is like.
Dependency (on anything) is clearly bad but a gentle dabble in order to explore our world, our brains and the relationship between them seems to me to be necessary, healthy and ...well, fun.