Fusion of realities - LSD and its medical potential
Normally we cannot smell a good Jazz or see the color of our favorite music, neither can we fascinate to the fractals we see as we close our eyes. Psychedelic drugs like LSD have an effect that can be defined by a single phrase: distorted reality. That is why, during the experience, that sort of things can happen; and lots more... But, no, the wall did not change color and is not melting dude! Lets say that LSD creates an illusory world where we live at for a while until it's time to come back to reality.
Where are we? What are we?
There's a problem with this definition: where we live at, every day, is also an illusion. No, we're not inside "The Matrix", it's about all the transformations the brain gives to the data we perceive so that we may understand it; and, that way, prevent us from getting a "what in hell?!" feeling every time we open our eyes in the morning. The brain, then, is not a mere machine that receives information and that's it, for the contrary: it takes an active role in our perception of the world and takes an active place in building it for us (weird, that when I refer to "us" I also refrer to "the brain". It fools itself!). This is the reason why we do not see a lot of things that actually ARE inside our eyeball (just in case you did not know, it is NOT a clear, transparent ball), find Jesus in a wall stain or recognize your dog in a cloud. Our brain filters the data that he receives by our perceiving senses and applies a bit of NeuroShop (tm) to accomplish the illusion of a functional daily life, yet it still is an illusion. The brain uses a long list of tricks to keep us living inside a permanent lie, a comfortable lie, in a disgusting world full of ocular guts and other realities that are actually not just as we perceive them. Obviously through evolution, to render this whole fiction must have a clear adaptive advantage.
So, all of the sudden, it is perfectly OK to feel a bit confused. How do we know we are not being cheated with a swapped reality? What if some parts of the LSD illusion are actually closer to reality than what we actually perceive?
Perceiving the real "me"
One of the most interesting parts of a psychedelic experience that can be attained by consuming LSD is the complete loss of subjective self-identity, also known as "Ego Death". This state is a bit hard to describe to a person that never experienced it, and a relatively simple way to describe it to someone would be that, instead of listening to a poor textual description, he could take some LSD. So, to not break the law -for now- lets attempt to define it from a sober point of view: Ego death is the loss of sensation that one is an individual person. During this, the physical body is suddenly revealed as an arbitrary barrier between us and the external world. Something worthy to us as much as the shirt that one wears, or the walls of the house, even the whole planet Earth itself.
We can't ever be sue of what is real and what is not.
A main premise in many religions (as Buddhism, for example) and also a leverage point for many philosophers (of the past and present), is that, at least in this case, taking LSD would be actually getting us closer to the "real thing". The "I" would actually be nothing else but one of our brain constructs; we, our individuality would actually be nothing else but a real time invention made by our brains, we could call them "the self-building machines". Or perhaps, since we're at it, "the machines that builds us" (think of the difference that rephrasing implies, it's crazy). Similarly to the example of the eyeball full of things we do not see, and the illusion of transparency, the illusion of "I" could be very useful. Among other things, the "I" does not want to cease existing and contributes with a strong survival instinct (to the point that some create another illusion, we call "after death", based on religion). We know, for instance, that it is easier to die if we first disperse the illusion of us existing as ourselves. A study proved that the loss of the "ego" cause by psychedelics (in this case psilocybin) relieves the anxiety upon an incoming death in terminal patients diagnosed with cancer. Basically, once death turns on the lights and off the music while smiling it asks if you need anything else because in 15 min it's closing. In this line of thinking, there's several researches that point out the potential psychedelics have to treat depression, anxiety and even, serious addictions, like tobacco and alcohol.
We'd know a lot less about consciousness and our "ego" if it wasn't for the LSD discovery (WE LOVE YOU HOFMANN). As a matter of fact, our fundamental tools today are LSD and functional magnetic resonance imaging; so, just as we cherish the the discovery of neural imaging, we should do so for the LSD.
If you liked this post and its informal way of talking about sciences, please, follow me for more!
Leave a comment either for good or for bad reviews. I take everything as constructive, and I really appreciate the feedback, even from trolls (at least a troll read it before being himself!).
Copyrights:
All the previously used images are of my authory or under a CC0 license (Source: pixabay), unless openly stated.
All the Images created by me possess a WTFPL licencing and they are free to redistribute, share, copy, paste, modify, sell, crop, paste, clone in whatever way you want.
I have had some experience in my younger years with this , Great analogy !
Yet, it does not fully "describe" it, as you may notice. It literally is, something unexplainable.
Very good way of seeing things, excellent view. the extraordinary post congratulations
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
2 things that come to mind here:
"Behind the veil of maya, the brick is still ultimately a brick"
How we perceive the world does not modify what the world itself is - it modifies how we perceive it.
We can change around the categories, but ultimately the physical world is still there and our perceptions are actually just categorisations more than illusions.
The second thing that comes to mind is that LSD does more than just shuffle the categories - it's known to actually create entirely false sensory input.
In a normally functioning brain, sensory input passes through a series of categorisation and filtering steps until it arrives at the cognitive layer of the brain. This is a process that for visual perception is very well understood in terms of HTM (Hierarchical Temporal Memory - look it up, it's awesome).
Ultimately, our brains solve the "binding problem" by having the concepts in our minds ultimately tie back to maps in the lower layers of this big pile of neural networks and ultimately back down to the original sensory input - which ties directly to physical "stuff" out there in the world.
The problem with hallucinogenics is they hijack this process - at some point they inject false input built from randomised activation into one layer of the chain and make the whole thing no longer correlate to actual real "stuff" in the outside world.
The idea that drugs such as LSD are useful for "expanding" consciousness is thus terribly flawed - they're more like the equivalent to a fault injection framework used in testing software and can often cause serious psychological problems.
Of course the opposite is also true - a little bit of fantasy after all is good for us (why else would fiction exist?) and immersing ourselves in fantasy worlds, even if generated entirely by randomised stimulation of serotonin receptors, can in a lot of cases enhance our mental wellbeing.
For me, i'll stick to movies, books and video games though - at least I can keep firmly in control with those.
That's a pretty big assumption - a common one, of course, that many of us make. Most of us operate under the assumption that there is something like objective, persistent reality, but none of us really know for sure. It's a rule in the game we're playing.
If we take LSD and start to smell a painting, or smell "Stairway to Heaven", how is it any less a valid interpretation of the sensory input? Especially with the senses of smell and taste, which appear to be especially arbitrary - if you start to see a visual representation of the smell of spearmint, how is it any less valid? How is it any less valid than say, a spectrogram of a song?
Is it possible to get a different perspective on something, and not expand your consciousness? If you have one way of looking at the world, take 300 ug of LSD, and come back with a second perspective, which you can access at any moment after that event, willfully choosing between the two, or even combining them, would it be incorrect to say that your consciousness has been expanded?
I think the information you have about the risks has probably been greatly exaggerated. Psychedelic drugs tend to have some of the lowest risks.
There's nothing wrong with not having an interest in psychedelic drugs, but a famous phrase comes to mind - "People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it."
Have a good one
I've never tried it nor do I want to,I hate not knowing what I am doing,I did used to drink but now stopped can't handle the after effects Oh and happy birthday :) @patelincho told us :)
The funny thing is, with LSD you know what you're doing. your brain processed data as usual, but with less "filters" (so to speak). It does not affect your cognitive capabilities like other drugs as alcohol do.
Oh ok what about pain relief does it help with that, If yes then can I have lorry load please
Your post is excellent. Do you know something about the development of LSD as a drug of spies? I read several times that their development was related to the CIA.I would venture to not use it. Several have been bad for his entire life.
I leave that kind of research for my tinfoil hat friends.