You know the type, probably a good father or worker, but serious faced all the time, never smiles, often in a bad mood, very cynical. It’s just I feel like I’m on the path to this, I’m 28, just escaped 12 years of food service so I’m already super cynical and if someone comes up to me, I’m super ready to shut down whatever’s about to happen. I feel like working with customers for years I’ve learned to have giant walls up and I can’t seem to remove them. I see the other guys in the factory I’m working at laughing and joking all the time, I think of myself as funny but it’s always deadpan humor and I wish I could genuinely smile and laugh and make friends with the other guys. Any old timers or well travelers out there have any advice?
As someone who doesn’t do shrooms, this might actually be the answer.
On a less sarcastic note, Shrooms and acid both bind to the 5HT2A serotonin receptor in the brain. This receptor is responsible for filtering out information. Sensory information like the buzzing of the AC or fridge gets filtered out because it’s not useful information, and you’ve heard it a million times anyways. When this receptor is blocked, your brain reverts back to a childlike state because all information is treated like new information because it’s not getting filtered out
Just to add a bit; I don’t know anything about brain chemistry, but if I cast the subjective experience into these terms I would imagine that this filtering occurs at higher levels of abstraction than the mentioned sensory input. Meaning that you have conscious awareness of ideas that your usual habits of thought would filter out before they reached conscious awareness. The vast majority of those ideas are just fun, creative, silly bullshit that can easily take on a quality of profundity that it is tempting to take far too seriously, but sometimes they can inspire more long-term creative paths, or even just let you appreciate your sober experience of the world in new and interesting ways.
This is useful for many of us who spend the vast majority of our thinking time in very utilitarian goal-oriented patterns. These habits of thought, while useful for earning a living working in a kitchen or whatever, for example, can hamper our ability to experience other sorts of creative, playful, and novel patterns of thought that make life fun. Breaking out of those habits can help bring new, vibrant perspectives on our living experience.
Right, good point, and yes: it’s much more than just sensory information. And it’s more than just the removal of a filter. There’s no small change in a complex system, especially when that system is the brain
Ive made a lot of music on Lucy. Im really curious what the effects of learning an instrument or languages are when under those conditions