I’m a huge proponent of safe psychedelic use, specifically LSD. I was massively depressed and suicidal growing up (I had family problems, and two of my best friends killed them selves at 13 and 17). I dropped out of high school. I experimented with LSD and mushrooms around 17/18 years old. And while I didn’t realize it then, my life massively changed for the better. Maybe I grew up. Maybe I took responsibility for my…
> psychedelics open the mind in ways that only radical life experiences can This is a good translation of the title of OP: neural plasticity is always active but never nearly as much as during major life events. Psychedlics are a shortcut to that sort of plasticity.
"open mind" is a hollow phrase, because you need an open mind to take the risk in the first place.
The only up side is that reason cannot overrule the nervous system at great length, which will sooner or later go into intoxication mode, and that the immune system can handle even chronic infections to some degree.
I would argue that some of the mental activity is caused by placebo effect, because I once experienced someone pranked, told to have been slipped MDMA, trying to embrace the situation and turning irrationally exited and happy for no substantial reason. Certainly some side effects may enhance the placebo effect, like weird after taste, alcohol or just staying up late and creating a suitable atmosphere, but believe is a strong cognitive bias. Otherwise one might just feel ill or poisoned.
A lot of the first experience involves sanity checks, so, if psychedelics have an effect on the currently running processes, so to speak, the ability to judge the situation will suffer first and inhibition won't kick in, or overreact. Then anything can happen with whatever one is liable to think about. Certainly nobody will dispute that normal productivity greatly suffers on a trip. So you can't really trust the self evaluation.