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Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

nature.com

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Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#71

Post by colordrops »

superswordfish wrote: post #57
rosser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying the parent commenter was made aware of the Tao? No, he's saying, "Some things are ineffable." — in exactly so many words. There are experiences we can have that simply can not be articulated in something as clumsy and imprecise as language. The same word can mean subtly different things to the parties of a single conversation, and this kind of thing is pretty much all subtlety. The experiences you…

But we're humans and our foremost means of communication is language. Who cares if it's clumsy and imprecise? Try us, it's the best we've got. Saying it's ineffable is lazy. Unless you're talking about the centerpiece of your religion, I suppose, so I thought parent was suggesting that this person had stumbled upon the Tao. Edit: My comments are getting hammered into oblivion, forbid somebody should try to hold somet…

Perhaps that is your answer - that you will only be left with questions until you experience one of these states firsthand.

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#72

Post by kough »

superswordfish wrote: post #29
kough wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about that :( The first time I took LSD (not hallucinogens in general, but LSD) went sort of similarly for me. Of course a life provides many confounding factors, but I ended up depressed and anxious for about three or four months afterwards. Took me a while to work my way out of it. I still think it was a worthwhile experience, but my symptoms weren't as bad as yours sound. I hope you're making a good…

> I ended up depressed and anxious for about three or four months afterwards Holy shit, that sounds awful.

Like I said, there were a lot of confounding factors that make it hard for me to put the blame solely on the acid. But pretty much I went in to it without taking it seriously. I ended up tripping pretty hard, by myself, from 1 PM - 9 PM, then kept tripping (not very hard, but enough that I didn't like it) throughout the rest of the night. I ended up watching the movie Chinatown on Netflix because I absolutely could not sleep -- pro tip, this is not a good movie to watch when you're afraid about not having come down and you're not sure if this is what life is going to be like forever into the future. This was the day/night before my school's next semester of classes started; needless to say it put me in a really weird place.

I have a ton of weird files that I wrote in VIM while I was tripping most heavily. I kept opening a new split/file instead of using parentheses, and I kept wanting to do this because my thoughts kept becoming more and more abstract. So I'd write a sentence, move that thought process to more abstract language, open a new buffer, repeat. At some point I remembered how to write macros and wrote a recursive macro that wrote some line of text and then a newline. I should really post this .tar.gz I have of all the files at some point, they're pretty out there.

EDIT: I guess this is the time I talk about my weird acid trip on HN. OK. Hope you all enjoyed.

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#73

Post by jsonne »

throwaway163 wrote: post #32
lsd_throwaway wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a counterpoint to this - I decided to do 150 micrograms of LSD after reading a lot about it on HN, talking with many friends that had tried it or do it fairly regularly and reading as much as I could find (Sam Harris, Huxley, What the Dormouse said etc.). Nothing can really prepare you for it - the dream like state, the visuals and just the capacity of how different things can be. When looking at things I saw the…

I had a similar experience. Except it was caused by marijuana. It sounds like a classic case of Depersonalization disorder, which is a subset/interconnected with anxiety. Google it. The consensus is that it can be triggered by substances in approx 3% of the population. Weed, mushrooms, ectstacy and LSD are the most common culprits. It's extremely common, though it has very little mindshare among mental health profess…

I don't partake in any kind of drugs outside of alcohol in social settings. I do however have an anxiety disorder that comes with a lot of panic. I always described myself in the throws of panic as feeling like I was playing a video game. It's a very surreal experience to feel like you're driving a car except your body is the car. You think right arm move and it does, but it doesn't quite feel like yourself. Very strange experience. Incidentally, it took me about 2 very long years to get a good handle on it where I'll only have an episode like that once or twice a year.

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#74

Post by nostalgiac »

superswordfish wrote: post #57
rosser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying the parent commenter was made aware of the Tao? No, he's saying, "Some things are ineffable." — in exactly so many words. There are experiences we can have that simply can not be articulated in something as clumsy and imprecise as language. The same word can mean subtly different things to the parties of a single conversation, and this kind of thing is pretty much all subtlety. The experiences you…

But we're humans and our foremost means of communication is language. Who cares if it's clumsy and imprecise? Try us, it's the best we've got. Saying it's ineffable is lazy. Unless you're talking about the centerpiece of your religion, I suppose, so I thought parent was suggesting that this person had stumbled upon the Tao. Edit: My comments are getting hammered into oblivion, forbid somebody should try to hold somet…

It's not lazy to say something such as an LSD trip is ineffable. It's just how it is.

Sure a lot of the sounds, sounds and experiences may technically be describable. But it's the experience itself that is ineffable.

I've done LSD twice myself, and won't be doing it again for many years as I started suffering from panic attacks and pretty much an existential crisis as many others in this thread reported.

That said, I don't regret taking it at all. It definitely broadened my mind to how simple we take the world for granted.

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#75

Post by lsd_throwaway »

martin1975 wrote: post #70
lsd_throwaway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fairly introspective person and I wouldn't say that it shook my world view - in the sense that I went in with a scientific world view and came out with one. I do have a better empathetic appreciation for mental illness and psychosis though (read And Then I Thought I was a Fish if you want to scare yourself). A trip makes you realize how incredible differently someone else's mind can perceive the world. The chal…

Religion is what the unconverted soul does in order to do right by God. To "make it to heaven", so to speak, by doing good things and avoiding doing bad or downright ugly things. All attempts at pleasing God - i.e. religion - are doomed because you inevitably will fail to meet the standard, because it is an impossible one - i.e. don't lust for women in your heart. Just as I wrote that...probably a thought or an image…

Without going too far off topic into a boring argument that won't go anywhere - I should say my religion comment includes the idea of a god/faith or supernatural creator etc.

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#76

Post by nefitty »

wutf wrote: post #27
nefitty wrote: post #4

Pretty cool. I'd like to point out that meditation might have a similar dampening effect on the default mode network as well. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25904238 The question arises again, can psychedelics have lasting effects or is meditation the only way to create permanent positive change in that direction? Finally, a quote from a letter to Osho: "Many people are experimenting with the drug ecstasy. I hear…

@nefitty, you posit that the diminishment of the self is a "permanent positive change." But you didn't provide any evidence. The reductio of your argument is that it's better to just be matter, since no self is involved. Few will agree with you.

Well, problems with the default mode network seem to be linked to depression, Alzheimer's, attentional disorders, anxiety, and on and on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network#Pathophys...

My comment was meant about the positive effect that meditation has on DMN function through structural changes. My contention is that these changes are likely more permanent and longer lasting than the behavioral changes triggered by psychedelics. I am going to go out on a limb and say most people think it's better to experience lowered anxiety, depression and increased attentional capacity, which is what I meant.

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#77

Post by ars »

cstrahan wrote: post #42
ars wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like LSD convinced you that you knew that stuff, without you actually knowing it. There are plenty of mental conditions where people are mistaken about what they know. You make it sound like this is a positive thing, I'm not convinced. If LSD actually gave you that insight, then maybe. But to give you the certainty without actually having the knowledge doesn't seem valuable. For example that snail - did you…

> You make it sound like this is a positive thing Meaning only exists between our ears -- it's not some intrinsic attribute of reality. I, for example, experience bouts of depression, where nothing about the world around me has changed, and yet my perception of (and feelings about) it becomes melancholic and devoid of purpose or meaning. If you walk away from an experience with a renewed sense of meaning or purpose,…

No, because it's not real.

He felt a connection between himself and the snail. There is no actual connection, but he felt it. If he believes that connection to be real he will act on it, but those actions will not be the right ones because their basis is false.

The problem is that it's actually possible to have a real connection, even between a person and a snail, but instead of a real connection you have the feeling of a connection, without the actuality of it.

> with a renewed sense of meaning or purpose

You are saying something different from what he said. I don't argue with what you said, because you are right, how a person experiences things is all internal.

But I feel like the drug is giving a fake experience, when the real one is possible. That's where the problem lies - you are fooling yourself, pretending you have something, when you don't.

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#78

Post by rpearl »

superswordfish wrote: post #57
rosser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying the parent commenter was made aware of the Tao? No, he's saying, "Some things are ineffable." — in exactly so many words. There are experiences we can have that simply can not be articulated in something as clumsy and imprecise as language. The same word can mean subtly different things to the parties of a single conversation, and this kind of thing is pretty much all subtlety. The experiences you…

But we're humans and our foremost means of communication is language. Who cares if it's clumsy and imprecise? Try us, it's the best we've got. Saying it's ineffable is lazy. Unless you're talking about the centerpiece of your religion, I suppose, so I thought parent was suggesting that this person had stumbled upon the Tao. Edit: My comments are getting hammered into oblivion, forbid somebody should try to hold somet…

Okay, I'm going to try to articulate the experience? Again, words are insufficient, but here are more of them.[1]

So here goes:

In the day-to-day life you experience a boundary between that which we consider 'self' and that which we consider 'other'. That boundary gives the environment shape, defined by what you know to be you. To say the same thing another way, the boundary is the difference between seeing the color blue, and describing it. Or the difference between listening to music, and describing vibrations in the air. Alan Watts has some lectures which might help you understand what this boundary is, if you don't "get it" yet.

That boundary is illusory. It is a way of thinking, a way of separating out the ego's experience from the environment. It is a pattern of thought and thought patterns can be changed. Psychedelics (I'm told), meditation (I know), and other techniques (sensory deprivation? sleep deprivation? haven't tried) are ways of changing your thinking to remove or blur this boundary. Some ways are more permanent than others; having such an experience often leaves you questioning what permanent is in the first place.

And again, as many in this thread have said, I've described it, or tried to, but it is necessary to experience it to actually understand the full detail of the situation.

[1] Commentary: I would argue that any form of expressing experience to another person is by construction imprecise; to truly have the same experience you must be the same person, and then you wouldn't need words. http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#79

Post by rpearl »

duaneb wrote: post #51
nefitty wrote: post #4

Pretty cool. I'd like to point out that meditation might have a similar dampening effect on the default mode network as well. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25904238 The question arises again, can psychedelics have lasting effects or is meditation the only way to create permanent positive change in that direction? Finally, a quote from a letter to Osho: "Many people are experimenting with the drug ecstasy. I hear…

I suspect LSD and meditation might approach the same thing from different angles. LSD itself can force you to deal with thoughts in your brain you can normally filter or suppress—potentially similar to how meditation can reveal unconscious biases, fears, desires, etc. I don't think that meditation is CONTRARY to drugs. Ecstasy is pretty stupid as far as mind-drugs go. You experience intense happiness, pleasure, indee…

Why do you need a reason to love yourself?

Re: Brain scans reveal how LSD affects consciousness

#80

Post by rpearl »

ars wrote: post #77
cstrahan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make it sound like this is a positive thing Meaning only exists between our ears -- it's not some intrinsic attribute of reality. I, for example, experience bouts of depression, where nothing about the world around me has changed, and yet my perception of (and feelings about) it becomes melancholic and devoid of purpose or meaning. If you walk away from an experience with a renewed sense of meaning or purpose,…

No, because it's not real. He felt a connection between himself and the snail. There is no actual connection, but he felt it. If he believes that connection to be real he will act on it, but those actions will not be the right ones because their basis is false. The problem is that it's actually possible to have a real connection, even between a person and a snail, but instead of a real connection you have the feeling…

What's an "actual connection"? What is the "real" experience?
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