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Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

nature.com

101–110 of 258 posts

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychedelic perception is also repeatable. And sober perception is not reliable.

Same drug, same effects. Cameras can't see your wall melting, but they exactly match what we see in reality Huh, weird.

We’re at the allegory of the cave level here. You gotta pass that point to understand this. But you also don’t have to understand this. It’s okay to not understand it.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#103
post #83

At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…

I can't help but keep rereading this. The statement "I've never done drugs" juxtaposed with "20 and 30 experiments" is kinda funny to me.

”Doing drugs” evokes images of injecting hard drugs with all the unclean nastiness.

”Experimenting with psychedelics” is really, really far from that reality.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#104
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but keep rereading this. The statement "I've never done drugs" juxtaposed with "20 and 30 experiments" is kinda funny to me.

”Doing drugs” evokes images of injecting hard drugs with all the unclean nastiness. ”Experimenting with psychedelics” is really, really far from that reality.

Which is silly because like the majority of drinkers the majority of illegal drug users aren’t like that stereotype either.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#105

At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…

A survey? Nature seems intent on tarnishing their brand.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#106

At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…

You should try going to an Orthodox Church and see how weird it is. It definitely makes you think of the spiritual meaning of things. THC alone makes me all spiritual feeling, and often in a good way. I think psychedelics would just take me to a scary spiritual place, not a euphoric one.

This truly doesn't work if you grew up going to an Orthodox Church as I did. I knew it was weird compared to, well, everyone else's churches and I absolutely hated that Easter was celebrated on a different day than everyone else. I hated it more when a teacher took me out in the hall to question me about it before concluding that I was too young to understand. (I was 9 and the teacher assumed I was Muslim). I do suggest the Easter service for an experience, though: It'll start late Saturday and into Sunday morning. It will be fairly crowded.

The churches can be difficult to find as well, at least in the US: It isn't unheard of for folks to travel an hour or so to their church of choice.

If you can't get to that, a gnostic mass will probably give a similar experience. It is, of course, Much more occult-theme religion, but it will keep some of the charm (possibly mixed with a bit of catholocism)

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#107

At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…

I had a strong Christian upbringing, but abandoned it at a young age. My adult life has been spent in natural sciences - research in physics, chemistry, biology.

Few years back I had my series of experiments with LSD & psilocybin. No enlightment was obtained, but one of the major realizations was that some serious psychotherapy is needed to understand and fix my warped self-image and the way of living originating from it. Been dissecting myself in a psychodynamic setting now, feel better.

I also often find myself using biblical terms in describing my actions and feelings. Sin, hell, heaven. Maybe this is some integration, maybe I watched too much Jordan Peterson videos in my dark days, heh.

One of the major takeaways is this near mystical feeling of awe about life. Having the education to understand things from the most fundamental building blocks just increases this. Protons and electrons, balls and springs, entropy maximization, phase spaces. Wiggling and docking macromolecules, interacting in the realm of low Reynolds number. Machinery using fundamental particles and photons, juggling photons, protons, and electrons to power the infinitely seeming finite complex machinery, molded by evolution. Freaking emergent properties arising from this - life, consciousness. And we have the capabilities to understand and actually fix some fundamental problems with this knowledge - eg. getting cryo-EM structures of covid spike proteins, docking millions of molecules through the computational methods created by the collaborative effort of our advanced cognitions.

This stuff was always cool, but now I look it like the most beautiful work of art, and feel the upmost priviledge to have the ability to pay my bills thinking about these things.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#109

Despite having had the relevant experience, I've always found it hard to understand why this happens. You know you're taking a drug that reliably induces feelings of "oceanic connectedness". Why should you change your worldview as a result? All kinds of things can change the way you feel temporarily, but most of them don't leave you thinking that you got insight into the way things really are. Maybe it's that psyched…

Many people are naive realists. For them a trip is truth, not a chemically induced hallucination. And they always describe trips as truth.

Re: Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

#110

At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…

I had a strong Christian upbringing, but abandoned it at a young age. My adult life has been spent in natural sciences - research in physics, chemistry, biology. Few years back I had my series of experiments with LSD & psilocybin. No enlightment was obtained, but one of the major realizations was that some serious psychotherapy is needed to understand and fix my warped self-image and the way of living originating fro…

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