[improv32]

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feelings as well as the hallucinations came and went together for me. After about 1-2 years I was completely back to normal. During that time I still microdosed occasionally, but that didn't seem to have any effect on those symptoms either way. I didn't have experience anything like that until I took pretty large doses (>200ug). I was taking 100ug doses on a regular basis without having any lasting effects, it appeared to me that the high doses came with the aftereffects. I also didn't experience anything like that with psilocin (mushrooms). I'm willing to answer any questions about my experience if anyone has any

[precisioncoder]

Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex... "something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off.

I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and it would go away.

I did some research and found out that there is a common effect with meditators that they can meditate while on drugs in order to mitigate or in some cases even deactivate some of the effects. So if you want to experiment it might be good to learn a bit so you have an extra tool to work with your mind while you're altering it.

YMMV of course.

[aphextim]

This came naturally for me although I'm sure the technique is not as refined as someone who practices it a lot.

When I first tried this I noticed that the hallucinations were very similar to those old magic eye books.

https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Eye-New-Looking-World/dp/083627...

In those books you relax and are able to see the image through the chaos.

The same can be said for when you are on these types of drugs, or at least for me personally. When I was able to relax and let my mind go, the hallucinations and visuals would come at a greater intensity. If I needed to, I was able to snap out of it by focusing my mind on the moment and tangible reality in front of me.

When I was leading a few people on their first experience I explained this to them, that if they are unable to relax and let go, the visuals would not come as quickly or be as intense. Do not be afraid, relax and let go and if needed you can ground yourself back if you have a decent mind and didn't take an amount larger than you can handle.

[theNJR]

I didn’t realize this was a thing! I’m generally able to do this too, especially when meditating. It started after trying psychedelics in college, which probably ‘activated’ something in my brain that said “you can make the carpet swirl”. It’s sort of like looking at a Magic Eye photo. I just tried to do it now, but having just woke up, I don’t think I can concentrate enough to do it.

How early did your parents start you on meditation?

[precisioncoder]

When you grow up in a buddhist family it's more like something that's always there. My parents were heavy meditators (1 hour+/day) so I would often just hang out with them. They probably half taught me a few dozen times when I was young, it's a culture thing. Kinda like growing up a Christian household I'm sure you accumulate random knowledge about the bible, god and jesus. When I was older I went through some more official training but it was purely an interest thing, they let me pick my own path. These days I meditate but I do it in a purely secular non religious way.

[theNJR]

That’s really cool. Appreciate you sharing.

[dejawu]

I honestly don't remember exactly where, but I was reading a wiki for psychonauts once and it provided a scale for the potency of a dose (e.g. No effect, threshold, etc) and the metric they used was the observer's ability to consciously resist the effects of the drug - kind of like when you're drunk or stoned and try to "force" yourself to sober up.

[csorrell]

I have a similar experience with HPPD...the ability to "flex" the mind to either increase or decrease the degree to which I was experiencing the visual pattern distortions. it was mostly just a matter of directing attention into the experience vs. pulling out of it. anyway, fascinating thread on HN this morning.

[jokowueu]

Fascinating thank you for sharing . Never heard of this

[morningseagulls]

>Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex... "something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off.

>I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and it would go away.

There has been some "intriguing evidence of overlap between the phenomenology and neurophysiology of meditation practice and psychedelic states."[0]

I came across this while researching meditation practices, and stumbled upon Andrew Newberg's work[1] on the neuroscience of religion.[2][3] He's spoken about an experiment where the neural correlates of nuns experienced in the "centering prayer" exhibited similarities to people who'd taken psilocybin mushrooms.[4]

I find this absolutely fascinating, yet completely expected, because the ancient literature on meditation do mention drugs in relation to meditation. For example, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras mention that "siddhis are born of practices performed in previous births, or by herbs, mantra repetition, asceticism, or by samadhi."[5]

In light of this, I've also thought about why, for example, there are the Five Precepts in Buddhism,[6] which are considered to be fundamental in the path towards attaining enlightenment. We've often understood it as a code of ethics for Buddhists, but what if it arose as a way to protect meditators from harming themselves and others in case of adverse episodes during meditation practice?

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0147...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_B._Newberg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/what-happ...

[4] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/28/psychedelic-drug-b...

[5] https://realitysandwich.com/11276/psychedelics_light_yoga_su...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_precepts

[khafra]

Extrapolating from the article and associated research, what you're describing as a mental "flex" may be an ability to consciously weight higher-level models over lower-level ones, and vice-versa. I'd be interested to see the fMRI results of a bunch of people who can do that "flex."

[nefitty]

Alan Watts wrote:

> “Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. When you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope; he goes away and works on what he has seen.”

What message, if any, were you looking for during your psychedelic explorations? Did you receive it?

[coldtea]

>What message, if any, were you looking for during your psychedelic explorations?

I just wanted to get stoned out of my head, and see some weird colors and shit man.

>Did you receive it?

Oh, yeah.

(I'm a little snarky here about the whole coming into psychedelics looking for some "message", and seeing that you receive it too).

[derpherpsson]

The experience of ego-softening, or even complete ego-death, is something that some psychedelics bring to their users. LSD, mushrooms and especially DMT does this.

Many normal humans will not know that this experience is even possible, or might dismiss it straight off as humbo jumbo. (Many drug users that did the drugs just for fun will get this as a sort of surprise gift. Sometimes they dismiss it despite having experienced it, sadly.)

Once one have experienced this a couple of times, it is possible to learn whereto steer the mind during normal meditation. It is possible, although it requires skill, to come there with normal sober meditation.

[IAmGraydon]

Derealization/depersonalization (known as DPDR) is a defense mechanism against painful sensory input - typically fear and/or anxiety. You brain sort of attenuates the external world and goes inside itself like a turtle that thinks it’s in danger. The state normally occurs in response to dangerous or traumatic situations (you often hear about out of body experiences in these situations), but particularly traumatic experiences (often from hallucinogens, abuse, war, etc) can cause a sort of sensitization that makes DPDR chronic.

[proverbialbunny]

DP/DR is like that.

Psychedelics are a tool that can be used to remove psychological disorders, but in the same vain can be used to create psychological disorders.

In an ideal world, if psychedelics were legal, they'd come with an instruction manual.

[trevyn]

I think an argument could be made that the sense of self is a psychological disorder.

[jmiskovic]

Please make that argument! I'd say disorder would refer to something unusual, whereas sense of self is very common among humans across different cultures. Am I misinformed?

[toxik]

It’s not a binary thing, to have or not have a sense of self. It’s the strength of that sensation that matters: can you let go of your own shortsighted selfishness to let something else grow? Unusually strong sense of self has been argued to be a cause of longterm depression. Comparison is the thief of joy after all.

[proverbialbunny]

You can grow past having a sense of self and still be depressed.

A closer overly simplified cause for many kinds of long term depression is pessimism and doubt. eg, "It will not work [so no need to consider trying]." It will not work is pessimism and not considering trying is doubt. Another terminology to describe this is learned helplessness.

But depression is far more complicated than just that. There is memory compartmentalization in a handful of types of depression, mostly episodic depression.

Sometimes it can be as subtle as not learning to note when you're having a good time. Someone who is depressed may, for example, have fun at an event, but the next time the same event pops up they may be hesitant to go again, because they didn't record when they were happy.

[proverbialbunny]

It's not that simple.

All of perception comes from noticing patterns. Labeling a thing, eg an apple, initially happens because you've seen multiple apples, or you've had it explained to you, which is using previous patterns (turned into words) you've already learned to manufacture a new pattern. Without pattern matching we wouldn't be able to identify or perceive things.

The mind pattern matches things. It's how we learn. We build abstractions, even when we don't know we're doing it.

The sense of self is an abstraction. Without abstractions we wouldn't be able to perceive anything.

(If you're talking about the sense of self as a negative, I'm going to assume here you're coming from a Theravada Buddhist perspective, but if not, I can adjust teaching/explanation style and terminology accordingly. Just let me know.)

The first fetter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetter_(Buddhism)#Lists_of_fet... ie identity view / non-self / anatta, is being able to fully identify all of the details that build the abstraction of self, which can only be done during high levels of mindfulness from deep meditation. You'll find many of the things people attribute to self, are things they have, not things they are. eg, the skills you've learned isn't you. It's the skills you have. Though, can an abstraction really -have- things? (It's a failing of English, as this doesn't translate into English properly.)

So, you go through first path and identify all the things you think you are: body, mind, psychology, cultural beliefs, and so on, examining each thing, recursively breaking those things down, and identifying how they are not you, but how the idea of self is built off of it. Eventually you get to see how your identity isn't you, and the freedom of not identifying with things, as well as the suffering that is caused from identifying with things.

Anyways, you'll not see an arhat or zen master wondering around unable to interpret things. They just have fully mapped out what self is and isn't, as well as the other causes of suffering. They're not brain dead.

So is the sense of self a psychological disorder? Self is a delusion, not an illusion, so no. Sense of self (identity view, that is) just causes unnecessary stress.

[kaybe]

How does language play into this? Is it a skill you have or is it part of the self too? Do you use language while you deliberate on these things?

[proverbialbunny]

Language, or more words, is like pointers to concepts.

[coldtea]

Not if it is the baseline we measure against (which it is).

Or if it has survival/performative utility (which it does).

[proverbialbunny]

How does it have a survival / performative advantage?

You can, eg, protect the body from harm, without having a sense of self, which ties into survival.

[doboyy]

Basically allowing societies to function (people assuming roles, shame, and whatever). It should be of no surprise that a damaged sense of self often correlates with poor integration into a society.

[proverbialbunny]

Roles, shame, and whatever doesn't sound like self. It sounds like cultural taboos and status within society. Neither of those are a sense of self.

Also, countries that are more Buddhist (ones that have less sense of self) tend to be more community based cultures, so that doesn't correlate.

[jdc]

Some senses of self are definitely less wrong than others, though.

[gpvos]

DP/DR = depersonalization/derealization disorder (I assume)

[bjourne]

How would an instruction manual have helped improv32?

[proverbialbunny]

A manual for a trip sitter would have helped more than anything imho.

A trip is steered through belief. It was a belief that gave improv32 DP/DR. (Though there is always edge cases, like toxicity from being a black market drug.) A trip sitter can clarify the faulty belief steering them back in a healthy direction. There are certain techniques to identify this. On the tripper's side of things, they have to be comfortable enough with the trip sitter to openly talk about things, and ofc have a good set and setting, which is also in part the trip sitters job.

[nwellnhof]

> I also didn't experience anything like that with psilocin (mushrooms).

A guy once told me that he was suffering from a severe form of HPPD for months. It was slowly driving him crazy, but the symptoms disappeared immediately after he consumed psilocybin.

[solveit]

Have you read Scott's recent article on what people report "enlightenment" feels like? If so, how did you relate to it?

[mistrial9]

did you read any Franz Kafka novels at any point?