[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.