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Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

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131–140 of 190 posts

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#131

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feel…

DP/DR is like that. Psychedelics are a tool that can be used to remove psychological disorders, but in the same vain can be used to create psychological disorders. In an ideal world, if psychedelics were legal, they'd come with an instruction manual.

DP/DR = depersonalization/derealization disorder (I assume)

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#132

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feel…

> I also didn't experience anything like that with psilocin (mushrooms).

A guy once told me that he was suffering from a severe form of HPPD for months. It was slowly driving him crazy, but the symptoms disappeared immediately after he consumed psilocybin.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#133
post #107
post #8

So I wonder: psychedelics make you more likely to believe woo, and more likely to have certain classes of visual hallucinations. But some people believe woo without taking psychedelics, and some people have those same visual hallucinations without taking psychedelics. Interesting, I believe it and have always wondered about this. I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to the…

> I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to them so can't really prove anything. > ... some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory). Many of these sensory experiences can be empirically and objectively analyzed. For example, phot…

> They see the world in much richer color than normal humans, and this has been empirically verified.

I am curious as how you could verify that. You can't observe someone else's experience, just their reaction to it.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#134

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feel…

Derealization/depersonalization (known as DPDR) is a defense mechanism against painful sensory input - typically fear and/or anxiety. You brain sort of attenuates the external world and goes inside itself like a turtle that thinks it’s in danger. The state normally occurs in response to dangerous or traumatic situations (you often hear about out of body experiences in these situations), but particularly traumatic experiences (often from hallucinogens, abuse, war, etc) can cause a sort of sensitization that makes DPDR chronic.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#136

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feel…

Derealization/depersonalization (known as DPDR) is a defense mechanism against painful sensory input - typically fear and/or anxiety. You brain sort of attenuates the external world and goes inside itself like a turtle that thinks it’s in danger. The state normally occurs in response to dangerous or traumatic situations (you often hear about out of body experiences in these situations), but particularly traumatic exp…

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Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#137

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feel…

Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex... "something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off. I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and…

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Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#138
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an argument could be made that the sense of self is a psychological disorder.

Please make that argument! I'd say disorder would refer to something unusual, whereas sense of self is very common among humans across different cultures. Am I misinformed?

It’s not a binary thing, to have or not have a sense of self. It’s the strength of that sensation that matters: can you let go of your own shortsighted selfishness to let something else grow? Unusually strong sense of self has been argued to be a cause of longterm depression. Comparison is the thief of joy after all.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#139

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feel…

Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex... "something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off. I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and…

Fascinating thank you for sharing . Never heard of this

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#140
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DP/DR is like that. Psychedelics are a tool that can be used to remove psychological disorders, but in the same vain can be used to create psychological disorders. In an ideal world, if psychedelics were legal, they'd come with an instruction manual.

I think an argument could be made that the sense of self is a psychological disorder.

It's not that simple.

All of perception comes from noticing patterns. Labeling a thing, eg an apple, initially happens because you've seen multiple apples, or you've had it explained to you, which is using previous patterns (turned into words) you've already learned to manufacture a new pattern. Without pattern matching we wouldn't be able to identify or perceive things.

The mind pattern matches things. It's how we learn. We build abstractions, even when we don't know we're doing it.

The sense of self is an abstraction. Without abstractions we wouldn't be able to perceive anything.

(If you're talking about the sense of self as a negative, I'm going to assume here you're coming from a Theravada Buddhist perspective, but if not, I can adjust teaching/explanation style and terminology accordingly. Just let me know.)

The first fetter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetter_(Buddhism)#Lists_of_fet... ie identity view / non-self / anatta, is being able to fully identify all of the details that build the abstraction of self, which can only be done during high levels of mindfulness from deep meditation. You'll find many of the things people attribute to self, are things they have, not things they are. eg, the skills you've learned isn't you. It's the skills you have. Though, can an abstraction really -have- things? (It's a failing of English, as this doesn't translate into English properly.)

So, you go through first path and identify all the things you think you are: body, mind, psychology, cultural beliefs, and so on, examining each thing, recursively breaking those things down, and identifying how they are not you, but how the idea of self is built off of it. Eventually you get to see how your identity isn't you, and the freedom of not identifying with things, as well as the suffering that is caused from identifying with things.

Anyways, you'll not see an arhat or zen master wondering around unable to interpret things. They just have fully mapped out what self is and isn't, as well as the other causes of suffering. They're not brain dead.

So is the sense of self a psychological disorder? Self is a delusion, not an illusion, so no. Sense of self (identity view, that is) just causes unnecessary stress.

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