I’ve probably tripped around 20 times throughout my life. I did it mostly because I bought into the idea that psychedelics would improve my life and habits in some way. I don’t believe that anymore, and I don’t think psychs really changed my life at all except it gave me lots of cool memories. I kind of feel some level of nostalgia for that reality-bending feeling of being on psychs, even though the last time I took it was only a couple months ago. It’s just so different from everyday experience.
I feel like psychs definitely have improved my life and habits, but not in the ways that I expected. It definitely didn’t make me more well-suited to existing in a capitalist society, if anything it made me less ambitious and motivated, but did incredibly improve my interpersonal interactions and my emotional regulation. I feel like I’m much more ‘at peace’ than I used to be. That said, everyone’s experience will vary, and it depends how you use and approach them as well.
i know there’s kinda a meme around it but psilocybin mushrooms genuinely changed the way i see myself and those around me. i’ve only done “heavier” doses at more pivotal moments in my life and in those moments i have been able to navigate a lot of difficult stuff with their guidance.
tough breakups, depressive and anxious episodes, these are things i would normally struggle with navigating but the kind of paradigm shift that comes with psychs has helped show me the errors in my ways or what i should do more of. recently i’ve been a lot more sociable than i ever have been in my entire life and i think a part of that is because of a trip i had earlier this year. in my journey of exploring gender expression as well, they have helped me realize i can be as masculine as i want while still identifying as a woman. they are an incredibly effective introspective and self-analysis tool and i really can’t underestimate how much they’ve benefitted me personally.
also, tripping and thinking about marxism has shown me more of the inherent flaws of capitalism and sometimes has given me optimism for socialism in the future.
I’ve tripped a bunch and I believe that doing so has had a pretty drastic influence on who I am today.
First off, I want to say that psychedelics aren’t for everyone. If you have a serious psychological or personality disorder like schizophrenia or BPB, you should probably avoid psychedelics. Feel free to do your own research, but my understanding is that doing so can result in some pretty negative consequences.
Second, if you do decide that you want to try psychedelics, make sure that you’re in a good headspace to do so. It won’t guarantee that you’ll have a good trip, but the inverse will almost certainly lead to a bad trip.
I had my first real psychedelic trip in my early twenties. This would have been about a year or so after moving out on my own. I won’t go into details about my time living at home, but to say that it was traumatic doesn’t quite do it justice.
I don’t think I was a very good person. My entire childhood was focused on my own self preservation. I didn’t have anyone looking out for me so I had no choice but to look after myself. Ultimately, this lead to early adult me being incredibly self absorbed. I couldn’t commit to anything or anyone. I couldn’t trust anyone.
This is not the person that I see when I look in the mirror today. That first mushroom trip unlocked my ability to see the world in colour. Before, everything was in black and white. I don’t think that I would be posting on here without my experiences with psychedelics. I don’t think that I would be a communist.
Around that time, I experimented with mushrooms and acid a lot. I had the odd bad trip, but even then, I would learn something about myself that I could take with me into sobriety.
I’ve been microdosing mushrooms for the past 2 years. It’s helped me to work on a lot of internalized trauma and has had a positive affect on some of my more minor ADHD symptoms. I’m currently on a break and I’m happy to say that I’m doing a lot better than the last break that I took. If this keeps up, I may not go back to it.
I’ll wrap it up here. Describing the effects of psychedelics to people who have never done them is honestly harder than explaining communism to some random groiped up shawty on the internet. I’m happy to answer any questions though!
Magic mushrooms saved my life and my sanity. They are the reason I didn’t kill myself and the reason I am so much more open minded. They taught me to look at everything from different angles and probably were the cause of me opening up to real communism and not like the liberal “well I support socialism but communism, USSR, CCP 300 billion dead.”
I have tripped heavily only 3 times. As in to the full " ego death" stages where you loose your sense of self. I have guided friend through trips on two of those occasions. The first 2 trips were much more meaningful to me than the 3rd. I kind of realized there was a diminishing returns to it. It’s definitely a very mind opening, spiritual experience the first few times if you do it right but once you’ve " woke up" to understanding it, it stops being as magical. It’s still an awesome experience but just looses the initial “wow factor.”
It’s something I think every adult should experience, if but only once.
On the topic of it losing the magical experience, I personally feel like it’s all about how often you do it and at what point in your life. It’s not a very scientific way of looking at it but I feel like the shrooms have to “call to you” in a way. I guess what I mean by that is you should have the want to do it not just because but because you feel like it’ll help you in your life. I haven’t had the want to trip in about 3 years but that has recently changed.
That’s also fair actually. My most recent trip I wasn’t fully wanting to do it. Honestly I just wants ready but my buddy I trip sat with a year prior was pushing to do it with a few of our other friends. They all got a lot out of it, being their first time and wanting to feel it. I, while enjoyed it, didn’t get as much out of it.
The other big issues are setting, company, and method. I have figured out the best method (so far) is to take them a certain way by soaking a powder in lemon juice for about 30 minutes then straining the solids out and then rinsing the solids with some soda or something then mixing the filtrate with the soda and chugging it. The solids are typically what cause stomach upset and also variations in the type of trip. Remove those and it’s a much cleaner trip and hits harder and faster with less.
Next is setting. You want to be comfortable and outside in a peaceful setting. The key is to experience the trip itself not try to do shit or party. It’s for meditation and reflection and being out in nature makes this so much better.
Then company. Want to be with people that won’t break you out of your desired experience. When me and my buddy tripped the first time we were of like mind. We sat quietly and enjoyed each other’s company without needing to talk much. Just ridding it through. The second trip was with people that were mich more talkative and “giggly” in general. So I couldn’t really get into the flow of things.
Definitely agree with all your points, set and setting are incredibly important when it comes to psychedelics. Also yeah I’ve read about lemon tek before but have not tried it myself, mostly cuz like I said I haven’t felt the want to trip but also because I saw that lemon tekking increases the strength of the trip and I don’t particularly want a strong trip lol.
Just means you can get more out of less basically. It hits faster and stronger with no stomach issues. The amount of solids I would have to ingest to get these kind of trips without this method would definitely make me throw up. My stomach is sensitive to it I have found. So like, what would take maybe 5+grams takes about 3.5-4 grams and starts hitting in about 15-20 minutes. By 30 you are really getting into it.
hits harder and faster with less
And doesn’t last as long in my experience. I had a pretty great first trip, but given the choice initially, I would have chosen something that doesn’t last 10 hours 💀
For setting, it’s nice to have some chill activities to do such as painting or colouring. It’s good to have something to distract you if it starts to become overwhelming.
I honestly prefer a little shorter of a trip yeah. I mean on the stuff I have a 4g dose will do a good 3-4 hours but those 3-4 hours might as well be a lifetime when you are on them. You will go on some journey of thought and emotion and it feels like it’s been a long time and then you look at a clock and 5 minutes have gone by. Knowing it won’t last super long can be a huge comfort if you start to get overwhelmed. The first time I trip sat I took 4g and my buddy took 5g. We both had the ego death and spent a good 2-3 hours in the “I am a formless thought floating through time and space” phase. He got more visuals than me. I still had them but apparently he was seeing himself turn into liquid and I did not experience that. lol. I came down about 45 minutes ahead of him. It’s good to be able to take them in an early afternoon and then come back by the evening and reflect on it all.
If you have something to learn, it will be there to teach you (or at least prepare your comprehension). But you need to touch grass in between because praxis is the key to understanding.
It’s done wonders for me. Some people might read this and assume that I simply lost my mind after taking shrooms, but to me it’s been the most beatiful feeling I ever felt and it opened doors I never even knew existed. My interests were always a bit “out there” and I’ve been going into rabbitholes ever since I first got my first dialup modem, so I’m not overly shocked that it just opened a couple new pathways for me to dive into.
Having been an atheist most of my life, after tripping on shrooms I got really curious about the general idea of consciousness which lead me to Carl Jung and ancient egypt which both rekindled old interests in “the occult”, bicameral mind, metaphysics and spirituality in general.
Edit: Open to any questions, btw.
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While my journey with hofman was cool and fun, some of the subtleties and not so subtle effects weren’t my cup of tea.
But the funguys have helped me greatly in times of need. Allowing me to put things in perspective and be okay with being alive in this world.
While not the sole reason I’m in a better mental state, I can say it has helped my descents not go so far down.
I completely agree with your sentiment: I was totally invested in psychedelics as a tool for psychological healing, and while they do have therapeutic benefits, recreational use is not how one achieves that and sometimes leads to people believing some really irrational things about the world amongst other side effects. I tripped at least 16 times in 2020, but I kinda lost count, and while at the time it felt like I was making breakthroughs and gaining insight, those returns diminished quickly and i was left with strong feelings of depersonalization/derealization/dissociation after stopping which made the issues I thought I had been working on so much worse. I’m still glad I had the experience of tripping as I did have some beautiful times on acid but be careful doing that stuff
what product(s) did you try ?
After taking LSD a few times, I gotta say it’s pretty fun. I enjoy experiencing the world through the eyes of a kid again. It’s also enlightening to see your life in third-person, as if you saw your life from a friend’s perspective. It definitely makes interacting with people interesting because you’re so attuned to the minutest signals: you can read people like a book.
Relevant to this forum, I had an interesting revelation while tripping that we exist at a non-exceptional time in history. The feeling that we are existing during what will be just one more page in the book was palpable. I think that gives me a lot of hope, even though things seem so dire at the moment.
LSD has allowed me to love labor and appreciate beauty in everything, psilo has allowed me to experience genuine empathy.
LSD also led me to a way greater understanding of dialectics and has allowed me to view myself as a statistic without it consuming me, if that makes sense. We can critique systems all we want from a birds-eye view, but it can be difficult to understand precisely how we interact with and exist within them on a personal level.
Psilo let me meet god. That was also neat.
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