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by empath75 3571 days ago
Drug experiences are still experiences and like any experience, you can learn something from them or waste them.

At the absolute least, a psychedelic experience should teach you a lesson about the reliability of the senses and about how subjective our experience of reality can be, which is a valuable lesson to learn, IMO, and no matter how much you understand it intellectually, directly experiencing it is another matter entirely.
2 comments
notliketherest 3571 days ago
You make a good point - the psychedelic experience can lead to a greater sense of empathy in that you perceive the world not through the eyes of your ego but as "all one" (over simplification). An increase in empathy is a good thing but equating these drugs to a magic pill for self actualization is wrong.
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posterboy 3570 days ago
> world not through the eyes of your ego

in most cases, you don't see much of the world past you own eyes anymore, but some "fantasy", which is why it is aptly called an hallucinogen. It messes with your head and you have a hard time making sense of the world so you revert to some basic notions of knowledge, that appear like an epiphany because they are that basic. I don't think these are new found insights and good luck if these facilities of your brain are damaged in the process. It is called acid for a reason.

Edit: A neat analogy would be fuzzing a production system. Not only that, it is randomly deleting files and flipping bits of memory to see how robust the system is. If your system is error free, the fuzzing is not a problem, but every system has bugs.

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sn9 3570 days ago
It seems like the people profiled in the article failed to learn that completely. Instead they go on about plant spirits and vibrations and other things they hallucinated as if they were actually real. That the perception of truth and truth itself are the same thing.

You don't need drugs at all to learn how subjective our own perceptions of reality are. And the risks suggest that it would be unwise to do so.

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empath75 3570 days ago
Like I said, you can waste it, amd lots of people do. Some people go through their entire lives and learn nothing. I'm sure you can appreciate that reading about a rose is not the same as smelling and seeing and holding a rose, though.
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