Why does everyone discount psychedelics as hippy nonsense...

Why does everyone discount psychedelics as hippy nonsense? They are real chemical compounds and they modify our consciousness in profound ways. Anyone who has taken them with sufficient dosage and attitude will tell you it is among the most compelling experiences you can have

There are parameters on consciousness. We know this from living. Run from a predator and you'll release adrenaline and experience an altered state of consciousness to aid in survival. Starve for a while and you'll start hallucinating. These are altered states of consciousness

Consciousness is clearly a parametrized space of some sort. What is the domain and range of consciousness? Psychedelics help us experiment. We dismiss consciousness as something intractable and a philosophical topic, but it is as real as anything

>It is the very thing which all these religions are yammering about. It's there, it's real. I mean, if you think the world is empty of adventure, then you just haven't been hanging out with the right crowd
>I mean, on a Saturday night within the confines of your own apartment on 5 grams of psilocybin mushrooms in silent darkness, I guarantee you you will believe that Ferdinand Magellan will take second place to you
>You will see things which no human being has ever seen before, and that no human being will ever see again. That's how big that universe is.
>The incredibly constricted space time locus of the here-and-now that evolution has forced upon us for survival purposes is simply one point in an apparently infinite hologram of explorable data that is the human world
>[The] entire world of every science fiction novel and story ever written is miniscule compared to the universes of strangeness and peculiarity that are accessible to any one of us if you will but apply the method...
-Terence McKenna

Is it not fascinating?

Other urls found in this thread:

maps.org/research-archive/w3pb/2008/2008_Passie_23067_1.pdf
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025168/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

>They are real chemical compounds and they modify our consciousness in profound ways. Anyone who has taken them with sufficient dosage and attitude will tell you it is among the most compelling experiences you can have
>Psychedelics help us experiment

It is fascinating!
I've been saying this about meth all along. But people just blow me off, like they are brainwashed or something.

Honestly i think science nerds just love huffing eachothers farts though, there is no real way to reason with them if you dont parrot the dogma.

You are doing gods work user. Keep at it.

insanely fascinating. but the the truth is a lot of people aren't interested and will defend their ideologies to the grave. sad but to each their own.

That's a straw man because meth physically damages the body. Psychedelics do not. Meth is not a psychedelic. Nice try though at witty sarcasm.

I'm not saying everyone should go do psychedelics. But this severe hate towards them is wholly unfounded. People who want should definitely be allowed to experiment if they are responsible, the same way we're allowed to drink alcohol. And psychedelics should be used more than they are to map the brain.

How can you call meth effects damage but not psychedelic effects damage if they are both products of altered states of consciousness with long lasting implications.

Plus, please find the study on repeated lsd usage in humans that shows no "damage"

I'm all for this kind of thing, but, everything you experience can just be explained as 'you believe to have unlocked the secrets of the universe' as opposed to actually doing it.

It's kind of like the brain in a jar theory right. It may feel like you're really talking with beings from another dimension or taking your consciousness to a higher plane, but it could also be that you just believe you have, due to mind altering substances.

This is what holds me back. Occams razor and all.

I'm not saying that it provides any profound insights into the nature of anything except your own subjective reality. It's clearly an illusion to claim so. It doesn't give you knowledge of math or physics, that's for sure. And there's no reason to believe the delusions are real in any firm sense of the word. But the mental state is real. The state of feeling like you're not a human but instead a 7-dimensional spinning space ship made of individual universes and things like this, exists. It exists in the potential states of consciousness that are within this universe. In that sense, it is "real". Sentient physical objects can mentally "go" there and experience this subjectively.

My shroom experience was insane (did it 1 year ago). My logical reasoning was impecable BUT the visual high was amazing. Patterns, complex geometrical shapes, all creating an overall harmonious total. Fear, insecurity, bad emotions were all supressed or seemed too insignificant compared to my curiosity as I was exploring this new world.
I also saw human veins pulsating on my floor and salt crystals inflating like a sponge when gets wet in my hands which was pretty neat.
10/10 would eat again when I have the chance

>if they are both products of altered states of consciousness

this is not logical, just because they are both products of altered states of consciousness does not mean they should work the same. In fact, they don't work on the same receptors in the brain and it's completely reasonable to claim that meth is physically damaging to your body and LSD is, at the very least comparably, harmless in a physical sense. Psychologically you might argue they are both damaging and that's a fair fargument, in some instances LSD is psychologically damaging. For a lot of people LSD is not psychologically damaging even thought they do it a here and there for years.

You are seeing reality in HD due to your pupils being more dilated and asimilating more information/details from the environment around you.

From my experiences with psychs, it's like seeing/thinking in 4D.

Imagine watching a ball drop.
You see it in a different position at each moment of its fall.
On the right psychs, you would see where it is at a given moment as well as where it was at its previous moments.

It's like taking a video of continuous motion, then blurring each frame together with all the frames in the past 5 seconds.

Instead of discrete points of time, you experience entire intervals of time (hence the 4D).

how is meth damaging in a way that is not psychological

I am saying that altering your brain using chemicals alters the way it works after, if you say meth is damaging, so is psy.

Plus, the mechanism of action in psy's is unknown, ESPECIALLY when compared to our knowledge about meth. We know WAY more about the what and how of meth than we do about psy's. Does not bode well for your "not harmful" idea.

Meth does all sorts of things like calcifies your skin or something and causes sores. It is also well known to cause permanent brain damage. Please become more educated on different drugs before you bother to speak.

Get out junkies.

the predator and the starvation examples needn't invoke anything about consciousness. Thought can exist unconsciously and the actions are seen in other organisms that do not have the level of consciousness we have.
interpreting Psychedelic experience presupposes a lot about identity theory, perception, direct knowledge, and is inescapable from the web of beliefs you already have. Obviously they're interesting, but they may not be of any use to consciousness itself, until we know what consciousness entails.
I think the biggest issue is with direct knowledge. Direct knowledge of what you experience is not concrete. Conscious phenomenal experience is not something that can be posited without much debate. With psychedelics, one interprets their experience as actually existing and actually appearing as experienced. I don't believe it is a huge deal, and what it does to the consciousness cannot be approached until we first answer what that question presupposes, i.e., what consciousness is, what an identity is, if or if not we have direct knowledge of experience, or inner thought(experience of inner thought), etc. The reason I attribute it to hippy nonsense is precisely because of the presuppositions made when talking about consciousness. No scientist or philosopher who cared for accuracy would evade the questions and go straight for identifying what so-so psychedelic experience consisted of.

I got HPPD from 2-cb and shroom usage. It's really annoying. Be cautious guys - it's not as improbable as you'd think it is.

one addition: some guy above mentioned seeing
> Patterns, complex geometrical shapes, all creating an overall harmonious total.
This is an example of presupposing direct phenomenal experience. This also says nothing about what was actually being experienced. ANyone can hallucinate, see things that aren't there. We don't posit these things as actually existing, nor should we conjecture about the meaning of them, for that is riddled with linguistic conceptual entities that have their own historical development, and are again nothing of truth itself.
It could be that what we think is consciousness, or phenomenal experience, isn't actually identifying anything that is existing, yet the underlying processes of perception (ex: how some blind can detect particular shapes and patterns despite being blind) that are not conscious in any respect. One also must take in to account the heightened emotional output of these drugs; how one may be tricked into feeling what was thought or said was accurate when in reality it wasn't. We experience such things on a very basic sober level (being angry and interpreting info falsely due to that, etc.).

>Why does everyone discount psychedelics as hippy nonsense? They are real chemical compounds and they modify our consciousness in profound ways.
Real chemical compounds? I was not aware anyone was calling them fake. And no they don't modify your consciousness in "profound" ways. The illusion of profundity is part of the hallucination. There is literally nothing profound about any of it. You just answered your own question. The reason people ridicule your hippy nonsense is because it's hippy nonsense which has melted your brain into a puddle of gullibility.

So basically you're saying that garbage becomes profound when you believe it.

I think it's because most psychedelic users are fucking idiots. My background is in psychology, and I've had a passion for psychedelics ever since I was about 15 and I came across the artists and academics exploring the use of psychedelic substances, with particular respect to how they can support human wellbeing. I dreamed of finding a like-minded group of people who did not necessarily have to be intellectuals, but would have a keen appreciation for the role of psychedelics in human life. Unfortunately, 99% of people who take them are low IQ hippy idiots, so I've always just done them by myself desu.

they arent hippy nonsense ive tripped very hard.
there is however alot of hippy nonsense that happens as a byproduct of idiots taking psychedelics
Terrence mckenna and his followers are a shinning example

Ugh this is such a straw man, nobody in this thread made this claim

The claim is that this subjective experience objectively is subjectively experiencable. Not that it indicates anything profound about reality just because it feels profound. But states of consciousness consisting of the feeling of immense profundity coupled with extremely complex and abstract thought patterns and geometric designs, do indeed exist, objectively to the degree that all human feelings such as pain exist objectively. We all agree pain exists, it's well known and studied in medicine and it's why pain killers exist. Well everyone who takes enough LSD reports this state of consciousness, therefore it objectively exists as a potential subjective experience.

Nobody here is actually claiming you learn anything profound while on it

you should really take your own advice

By all means psychedelics cause permanent brain damage if repeated (or singular sometimes) usage leads to massive changes in perception/behavior afterwards

No, you completely missed the point. The point is that states of consciousness exist which are so alien to the typical state of human consciousness we use for survival and everyday life, so it prompts questions regarding the outer boundaries of consciousness. What is the weirdest, most alien state of consciousness that can exist?

Does a state of consciousness exist within the space of potential conscious states supported by the universe, where for instance pure absolute unadulterated joy is felt to a degree that is incomprehensible to even the strongest psychedelic user?

Does a state of consciousness exist within the space of potential conscious states supported by the universe, where for instance pure absolute unadulterated "X" is felt to a degree that is incomprehensible to even the strongest psychedelic user? Where X can be defined as any arbitrary emotion? Are there feelings or groups of similar qualia that humans cannot feel because we weren't evolved to feel them? How many exist?

If you can't see how it prompts these questions then please think about it some more. And if you can't see that this is an interesting question then you're not a truly scientifically minded person. It's a FASCINATING question that comes as close to the heart of the human condition as you can imagine.

>Well everyone who takes enough LSD reports this state of consciousness
no they dont

t. somebody who has done acid numerous times with different groups of people

stop huffing yo farts fag

Please provide evidence for your claim. It's well known that psychedelics are relatively physically harmless in people without a predispositions to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, and when taking dosages small enough to not induce PTSD

Furthermore, ~I am not advocating everyone go out and take them over and over~. I am simply saying everything I said in the OP and my other posts. So please do not straw man as is so common regarding this topic. Keep in mind that researching volcanos and sending men to the moon is dangerous too but we do it.

>It's well known that meth are relatively physically harmless in people without a predispositions to mental illnesses.

Provide evidence for all of your claims idiot.

Ill say it again, psychedelics are not well researched. You cannot say with any certainty they are not psychologically harmful.

What straw man

Look I'm not even going to debate this because it's legitimately completely tangential to the topic I'm actually trying to talk about in this thread. That's why it's a straw man.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend assume there IS a risk of some percentage of people developing psychological issues due to overuse of psychedelics.

Under that context, are any of my actual claims invalidated? Please argue within that context, because as I said, sending humans to the moon is very, very dangerous stuff. But we do it anyway because of the potential to gain worthwhile knowledge.

>meth
Also why did you edit my quote and put meth in there? Literal straw man. You're actually comparing meth to psychedelics. You clearly know nothing about drugs.

because the alteration of brain chemicals physically changes the brain.

when you do drugs you alter the brains chemistry to the extreme, in specific ways and certain areas. this leads to altered brain structure

really simple shit

why do you think the {weed,acid,meth,heroin} heads share similar quirks with their respective class? one reason is the way the drug alters the brain.

Okay you're just clueless and have no business in this thread, weed and acid are not even remotely comparable to meth and heroin.

And temporarily altering brain chemistry does not necessarily "physically change the brain", that's not how any of this works

Why do I get the feeling that there is a massive amount of samefagging going on in this thread?

>"Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) is produced
by a small number of neurons (1000s) that each innervate
as many as 500,000 other neurons. For the most
part, these neurons originate in the raphe nuclei (RN)
of the midbrain. One major target of these is the locus
coeruleus (LC), which controls the release of norepinephrine,
which regulates the sympathetic nervous system.
The LC also has neurons that extend into the cerebellum,
thalamus, hypothalamus, cerebral cortex, and
hippocampus."

>"In general, 5-HT may be seen as a mainly inhibitory
transmitter; thus, when its activity is decreased, the next
neuron in the chain is freed from inhibition and becomes
more active. This view is limited by the fact that
a few 5-HT receptors are excitatory ion channels (5-HT3)
and some subtypes may have excitatory effects depending
upon the G protein coupling within specific neurons.
Since serotonergic systems appear to be intimately involved
in the control of sensation, sleep, attention, and
mood, it may be possible to explain the actions of LSD and
other hallucinogens by their disinhibition of these critical
systems"


>"LSD acts as a 5-HT autoreceptor agonist on 5-HT1A receptors
in the LC, the RN, and the cortex. It inhibits firing
and serotonin release of these cells. "

>"However, the hallucinogenic
effect of LSD has been linked to its affinity
for the 5-HT2 receptor where it acts as a 5-HT2
agonist, as this property is shared by hallucinogens of
the phenethylamine group (mescaline, 2,5-dimethoxy-4-
iodoamphetamine, etc.) and the indolamine group (psilocybin,
DMT). A strong correlation was described between
psychoactive doses of these hallucinogens and their respective
potency at the 5-HT2 receptor"

maps.org/research-archive/w3pb/2008/2008_Passie_23067_1.pdf

1/2

I think if normal experience changes your brain and the way you think, drug induced experience does too. (Neuroplasticity :o)

"There is a very large body of evidence which, when put together, suggests that antidepressant treatments act by inducing neuroplastic changes in the brain. This article provides a simple (and very much simplified!) explanation of the neuroplasticity hypothesis of antidepressant action."
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025168/

You dont.


I would never force changing the way someone thinks because i think psychedelics made me feel good, or figure out something new. To me i knew i was putting on colored glasses every time i did a psy. I dont think you and a bunch of other idiots do. You think it is informative.

What i never realized with psy drugs(including cannabis) is that they change you, slowly. So when you tell people to do them you fucking suck. Also check out delta FOSB, a gene highly correlated with addictive behavior, and triggered by some psys.

Okay, great, you're taking extremely cautious measures. That's awesome and if you never want to do psychs, don't do them. But there's no reason people who want to shouldn't be allowed to, and there's no good reason we shouldn't be allowed to research these drugs in more depth.

Oh and i guess i should add because you probably dont know, that the antidepressents the article mentions work like psys but are far more receptor specific and less potent.

I would love to explain more but honestly this isn't fun and i dont want to quote articles and argue with somebody who hasnt done basic web browsing on the subject.

Just dont parrot shit like
>hey are real chemical compounds and they modify our consciousness in profound ways. Anyone who has taken them with sufficient dosage and attitude will tell you it is among the most compelling experiences you can have

You worthless shitbrain

for

>hey are real chemical compounds and they modify our consciousness in profound ways. Anyone who has taken them with sufficient dosage and attitude will tell you it is among the most compelling experiences you can have
How is it parroting anything to say that from your own personal experience?

yea they change you. if you're smart, its in a good way, i.e., teach you to courageously live your life and explore all that there is in the world

>if you're smart, its in a good way, i.e., teach you to courageously live your life and explore all that there is in the world

YEAH DUDE #WOKE, READ A BOOK.
Go back to /b/ or wherever you came from.

i said parrot because all you acid heads sound the same but your're right, its not the proper usage

though i could kinda say you are parroting the thoughts 5g mushrooms put in your head

except most people who do drugs dont end up well

So for all its worth in the moment i guess is fine for you but give people a chance to figure out if that is the life for them before chemically skullfucking them into thinking it like you are.

>except most people who do drugs dont end up well

I'm just so sick of stereotypes and fallacious generalizations being spewed constantly regarding this topic. There are tons of different drugs and some of them are life crippling, whereas some of them are life fulfilling. Why is that so hard to comprehend? Why do you people even use the broad term "drugs"? The majority of people in the world use drugs regularly and are fine. It's just that they use certain drugs we don't consider to be "drug drugs" because their effects are less noticeable.

this!

Tylenol is a drug too that other guy is a a total idiot. Smoke meth daily mih niggas

Is being on drugs really altering your consciousness? I'm skeptical. Your consciousness is not your feelings and thoughts, those are like clouds in the sky. Your consciousness is your sense of awareness, or "I am"-ness. I've never taken drugs so I don't know, but do they really affect anything besides your sensory input, emotions, etc?

...In this world

The bulk of the human population can be viewed as herd animals. Everything you've stated should be common sense, but people are poor at building coherent frameworks of knowledge, pursuing truth for themselves with any intellectual honesty, and properly integrating available data. Strictly empirical and otherwise. They must be put in a social ecology where they are consistently "told" to have this change. Though often if it doesn't begin early, they will simply remain quiet or leave, to find comfort elsewhere. And they will find it.

Consciousness is likely strictly mechanical. What does that actually mean? We don't know. We don't know what is behind the underlying logic that drives the universe, if it's self contained, if perhaps every given system whether micro or magic, you or a pile of rocks, is not having its memory harvested and used by something. Memory is simply state. The universe is a state machine. There is nothing but state. Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Democritus were ultimately saying the same things from different angles.

>micro or magic
micro or macro*

Lots of non-intellectual people can't close their minds a bit and become skeptical of nonsense. Lots of intellectual people can't open their minds a bit and become rational regarding topics that are often associated with nonsense. It doesn't matter if psychedelics are associated with hippies and druggies - you should look at them rationally, scientifically, and philosophically.

But intellectual people often fail to do so because they immediately assume that psychedelics are in the "astrology, hand reading, mysticism" group of topics - and they are in some senses, but they also are not when you put that all aside and look at them for what they are.