[colordrops]

Sorry to be blunt, but this sounds like an issue with your thinking, rather than an issue with psilocybin. You were already vulnerable to woo woo and narcissistic thinking, and psilocybin just awakened these traits in you. It's analogous to how hallucinogens can cause snaps in people with undiagnosed schizophrenia. In fact it could be said that it helped you because you became aware of them and flushed them out of your system.

[mettamage]

I disagree with this.

When people are vulnerable to something that doesn't mean they should have to go through it. There are many examples where it will make a human weaker in the end. There are also many examples where it will make a human stronger, but I think in his story it made him weaker because he lost 10 years that he otherwise presumably wouldn't have.

Not only did he lost 10 years, he lost 10 relatively foundational years (i.e. it's less bad to "lose 10 years" in your 60s to 70s compared to your 20s to 30s due to the compound interest effect that early "good years" have).

[colordrops]

The reason I posted this is because I went through a very similar experience, in fact for about the same length of time. I did this with a half dozen other people that also had "spiritual" experiences, but didn't fall into the same way of thinking as myself, so there's 7-8 data points that fed into my comment.

[notch656a]

Genuinely curious, but how did you all come to this conclusion, are your friends similar? As an engineer with friends who were engineers and scientists, most of us just thought "wow our brain sure is an interesting machine when you manipulate the chemicals" and went on with your lives virtually unchanged.

When I look back at those years I used psychedelics my only real takeaway from use is that the mind is an interesting machine and drugs make me dance funny. Maybe it's because I don't know a spiritual crowd but even my old buddies from rural working class places just found them entertaining, I never heard a single story about spiritual breakthroughs.

[colordrops]

No, I'm saying I fell to the woo, but my other friends did not, despite having spiritual experiences. We are all engineers btw.

[notch656a]

Thank you for your sharing your experience.

[whilestanding]

It's possible I was vulnerable to this flawed thinking before this. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter too much to me if the chicken or egg came first. And in the long run I don't know if it helped or hurt me due to the butterfly effect. But I do know I regret it and if I had the choice to go back in time I would have stayed away from psilocybin.

[mountainriver]

I’m not sure I totally buy this. Yes psychedelics illuminate your mind but they also induce spiritual experiences in most people that take them.

For folks who have little real spiritual understanding (most Americans), this can seem very enticing

[colordrops]

It sounds like you mostly agree with me, and that most Americans are prone to woo woo and narcissism, which sounds pretty accurate.