Psychedelic

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Discussion of the experience of synthetic and plant medicine compounds throughout history and around the globe. No sourcing of compounds.

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Welcome (self.psychedelic)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by PlanetMedicines to c/psychedelic
 
 

I'm a human doing some human organizing around the experience that's been labeled "psychedelic" and the practices, medicines and plant compounds around the planet and throughout time which have been known to elicit this experience.

Whether this is a "real" visionary state or just a bi-product of a brain process, it IS something that happens to humans and certain other creatures on Earth. The fact that humans have such experiences across cultures and throughout time is a phenomenon. This forum encourages discussion of the phenomenology of psychedelic experience.

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On the weekend I am planning to take psilocybin for the first time. I am generally a very careful and cautious person. During my twenties I got struck heavily by depression. What saved me from it and many bad habits that I picked up through the years was an ever increasing meditation regiment that continuously reduced the frequency of my recurring bouts of depression.

I am not sure what to do. I feel like psilocybin could be just the thing that completely cuts the remaining shackles of my depression or this is what I fear; it drives me completely insane.

Maybe meditation will bring me also there, maybe I am just too impatient. I don't know.

I am looking to rediscover genuine joy. Being able to relate to people. I often have the feeling I can not connect to people on a fundamental level because there is this traumatizing depression with us in the room and I just think they haven't seen what I have seen. And this separates us.

I feel undecided and it seems like I am lacking the wisdom to make a decision.

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The dominant factor spanned a continuum of experiential facets whose opposite extreme flagged words that appear to describe mental expansion, including the terms universe, space, world, consciousness, breakthrough, existence, earth, dimension, reality, flame, and tunnel—all of which would be consistent with the phenomenology of the mystical experience (3). References to liminal conscious beings, also characteristic of the mystical experience, were described by the terms entity, sitter, alien, beings, and spirit. A theme of immediate time horizon was indicated by the term seconds and also suggested by references to bodily systems such as eyes and lungs, along with physiological functions inhale(d), exhaled, and breath. At the level of neurotransmitter receptors, this constellation of induced conscious alterations was linked most strongly with drugs that preferentially bind to D1, 5-HT7, KOR, 5-HT5A, as well as Sigma-1 and NMDA. The codependencies embedded in this profile of receptor bindings and subjective terms were most closely associated with the hallucinogenic drugs DMT, salvinorin A, 5-MeO-DMT, and ketamine. The anatomical brain regions that coexpress these sets of receptor density proxies included some of the highest regions of the association cortex, especially the rostral and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, temporoparietal junction, and also prominently in the primary motor and sensory cortices. >

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Mystical experiences are characterised by ineffability – that is, what is subjectively experienced is difficult, or impossible, to adequately put into words. However, we can go a step further and say that such experiences are transrational: their ineffability relates to the fact that these experiences lie outside the scope of reason. >

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