[pmoriarty]

It's sometimes not enough to simply use psychedelics. A lot has to do with the way you use them, with what intention, in what context, with whom, and how you follow up on and integrate your experience.

Plenty (most?) people take psychedelics without any kind of therapeutic or constructive intention -- they take them to party, to escape, as an antidote for boredom, etc. It's not surprising that such use of these powerful substances could have undesirable or even very negative effects -- though sometimes even such arguably reckless use still produces positive results.

Use of psychedelics in therapeutic and healing contexts tends to be very different. The intention tends to be very different, with a focus on healing or on a specific illness, symptom, or problem that the individual suffers from. There is often serious preparation for the journey, ranging from ways of purifying oneself (for psychedelic use in shamanic or other sacred contexts), to sessions of therapy (when this has been done in Western medical contexts).

The actual trips themselves also tend to be handled quite differently in healing/therapeutic contexts from recreational ones. In recreational contexts, people often do it at parties, with the lights on, or maybe watching movies, or maybe sometimes outside in nature. In therapeutic/healing context, the lights tend to be very low or off, sometimes blindfolds are used, and the focus internal. Music is often carefully selected to guide the journey. Sometimes people are asked to look at photos of loved one they've brought with them for this purpose. If things go wrong, trained support is available, and instructions are given on how to the experience in a constructive way, while in recreational settings the support is minimal and usually untrained, if it exists at all.

After the experience, the recreational user is usually on their own in terms of integrating and making sense of the experience, while in medical contexts there are often followup therapy sessions with trained professionals who can help in making sense of and constructively using whatever was uncovered during the trip, and perhaps the scheduling of further experiences with modified dosage, if needed.

I have no idea how your own psychedelic experiences were, but if they were more of the recreational kind, I am not very surprised that you didn't get much out of them.

[Fnoord]

The problem wasn't that I didn't get much out of them (I got a whole lot out of these experiences else I would've quit after doing it once) the problem is that it didn't gave me the ASD diagnosis or the long-term benefits of stable SSRI usage together with education and work. If I knew back then that I had ASD, I'd have benefited from that knowledge back then. In the meantime, I was stuck with the notion that I have a (different) diagnosis but I cannot work out how to apply that with my real-life. Sure, the circumstances were different as well, and it is anecdotal.

The usage of drugs (recreational or not) without them being prescribed and without a trained, licensed professional guiding you is indeed something different than recreational usage for which the drugs I mentioned (psilocybin, MDMA, marihuana, DMT) and A.muscaria are not licensed for anywhere AFAIK.

The recreational drug usage of psilocybin was, for me, almost exclusively done in a safe, private setting though without bright light and with a careful choice of music. Because otherwise it hurts. For DMT and A.muscaria, it was exclusively done in such setting as well. I can guarantee you my focus was inward however it cannot be compared to a licensed, educated babysitter who's getting paid.