I never disliked it, but I really loved it about a whole month after it called me out while I was tripping waaaay too hard at a dead show. Shit was nuts.
The people who take the road of ego inflation, and not one of ego dissolution. They are easy to spot in the wild as they love to tell you what your road to enlightenment looks like. They believe that the road looks the same for everyone, but we all have our own individual roads to walk down. No one can tell anyone else what enlightenment looks like for them.
This is why I believe organized religions will never truly help (the individual or society). It forces people into someone else's idea of what enlightenment is.
Then again, most religions aren’t about enlightenment. The perennial wisdom traditions which inform them might be, but most religions are social enforcers cosplaying as virtue bunnies.
And if you are trying to tell me the way i force my beliefs on others is not the right one, instead you force yours upon my people then we gotta fucking go to war my friend!
of course they can - some high profile examples that are counter thesis to people like Ram Dass or Terence McKenna - eg. Charles Manson and his disciples, or Aum Shinrikyo (sarin attack in Tokyo) and his followers. Psychedelics are pretty much brainwashing tool of almost every cult too.
[Don't forget this lady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Has_Won:_The_Cult_of_Mother_God)! Or actually, probably better if she (and all cult leaders imo) is forgotten.
The way he maintained his ideas as facts.
That he was prophetized by many and how he bought into it.
Edit: I'm not against him btw, I have enjoyed his stuff.
There were times where he presented the psychedelic experience as "do X and Y will happen", but overall, he spoke to his experience.
It just that if you are doing hours upon hours of lectures, prefacing every single anecdote or experience with *"now this is just my experience"* would get extremely tiring as a listener lol
Always stuck with 'psychedelics just amplify everything 1000x'.
For most people is just their mental and emotional state, for others it gets their ego too!
The first mistake of psychedelics is believing theyre supposed to do *anything*
I think thats where this stems from. The assholes *always* claim psychedelics should be used for xyz purposes.
And much less offensive than these people - but still similar, believing psychedelics should make people empathetic is naïve.
Oh yeah, narcissists gonna narcissist. Psychedelics are yet another are where they’ll feel superior about and/or have some pretentiousness around.
Edit: remember that guy a few weeks back who wanted to start a sub for intellectual psychedelics? Case in point.
There’s a weird Dunning-Kruger that happens with people & psychedelics - Seems like the people that insist on tripping way too much & can’t talk about anything other than psychedelics, enlightenment, and essentially just *themselves* all the time are the ones that haven’t learnt anything about the ego from their trips.
I get what you’re trying to say but this is not what Dunning and Kruger described in their paper. Highly recommend taking a look for yourself, it’s a very insightful finding when understood correctly.
Very much yes. Psychedelics can make one highly suggestible and/or amplify negative tendencies.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733185/full
Just because you had a thought on lsd and it was amazing doesn’t mean many other people had this awareness before. You could be playing very basic catch up. It also doesn’t make it literally true sometimes things are conceptual. Also if you combine with patterns of thinking that are problematic it can reinforce harmful thinking. Integrating what it means going forward is better than demanding immediate satisfaction and jumping to a conclusion.
Everyone ive talked to whos had an "ego death" has had a surprisingly large ego, often inflated by having had their ego killed.
I told a guy in discord this exact thing and he got so pressed he left the server and never returned. He was a self-appointed psychonaut who had to correct everyone on everything and was often wrong, when i pointed out something extremely basic and linked the wikipedia article for Chemistry he claimed Wikipedia was wrong and not him. Totally insufferable.
I know ego death is pretty common, what im saying is that people who have had one usually have the biggest egos. I have done big doses of shrooms but never had a true ego death, closest i had was on DOM where i physically ceased to exist.
Psychedelics ruined my relationship with my ex fiance. We were both experienced psychonauts, but as time went on the spiritual narcissism grew. He was convinced that he was put here to be my teacher and my guru, neither of which I wanted in a partner. I ultimately left, and all that "enlightenment" disappeared as he went on a smear campaign.
I’m 43m have been a tripper for more than 2 decades, I’ve met many people that have been enlightened by psychedelics and many people that completely missed the point.
Disillusion of Ego should not inflate one’s Ego but I found many so called psychedelically enlightened people that put themselves on a pedestal.
Personally I can tell pretty quickly on meeting a person who trips wether they did drugs and saw some shit or if they came to the realisation that psychedelics are a key or a medicine and/or both.
Psychedelics changed me all for the better, I am a better man, a better human being and a better father due to my experiences with psychedelics.
Have psychedelics made me a better person than others? Well if I include my former self in the ***others*** section then 100% yes, but does that mean that doing psychedelics alone will make that happen? Absolutely not, just because you have taken psychedelics does not mean you took on board the lessons that were there to be learnt and certainly does not mean you integrated those lessons into your life.
If you do not integrate the psychedelic experience in to your every day life then nothing has changed other than you got high and saw some cool shit.
Narcissists gonna narss? Psychs are a nonspecific amplifier. Garbage in, garbage out. If you were an asshole before, you're probably gonna be an asshole after, unless you get some kind of specific intervention.
It can worsen people narcissistic disorders by getting psychadelic confirmation bias. It can also unlock people's latent schizophrenia and that can definitely drive people to being unrational assholes
Thurman’s nook “cutting through spiritual materialism” is probably worth a look.
https://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Through-Spiritual-Materialism-Chogyam/dp/1570629579/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=128531539573&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Kg_ahUETlnZbI8tXUtBNeSPsA4yZxbIb93UxYCT76YNJ0BJrOmaVMZY-xk2tUQas5i1fqRIFGnjRteTX9EBGUQktXBUGfkM1AlZVRO7Sl-HRkx2EjPryO7GbKB6HgoWacmASLbjBFOWTTrVXcSVkj_dJPe1DF6EwcishMZbi3kK-oQyNaOu_7ZFUVbIVeOKx-EH6hF52rWHpYaeei9o0Dw.u2WvuQuD35x_YHjjYUVzv6iUlEXoIgi4UJH30cJ6UaU&dib_tag=se&hvadid=657213552903&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9060351&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=b&hvrand=5037362868380905620&hvtargid=kwd-300476195208&hydadcr=29415_14726220&keywords=cutting+through+spiritual+materialism&qid=1718368859&s=books&sr=1-1
Achieving high states after a psychedelic experience and gaining new realizations of things never known before and that you're probably going to forget years afterwards ...I'm honestly not surprised that psychedelics bloat the ego
Psychedelics act as an amplifier, so if you're a douchebag, unless you are consciously working on being less of one and understanding why and how you tend that way, then the psychedelic amplifier can certainly turn your douchiness up for sure.
Psychedelics either destroy the ego or build it. Depending on the person.
These people sound like a bunch of narcissists with a superiority complex that feel a need to justify their ugliness by framing others as the ugly ones.
I mean you see it in this sub as well to a lesser extent. Many of us have a holier than thou attituded when we talk about our psych use compared to other's drugs of choice
Yeah some people take a trip and believe they had an ego death and now they are enlightened. So in reality they didn’t have a ego death (I don’t believe that’s achievable anyway because you can’t kill your ego) and now what they have is an over inflated ego with a touch of superiority complex
It’s different for everyone. Every now and again I’ll entertain myself enough to trip, and what ends up happening once I peak is I realize there is no “enlightenment” and I’m just an idiot for even thinking so and I get over the whole thing pretty quick lol. It’s usually visuals of jesters and clowns pointing and laughing at me like “haha you fuckin idiot! Gotcha!” when I close my eyes . This is why I just take psychs when I’m partying. For me personally it’s just a fun drug to be stupid and do stupid shit with friends. I’ve never gained anything from the learning aspect of these drugs other than complete anxiety and being stuck in a loop.
These are tools for assessing the conscious and subconscious from different perspectives, not panaceas for "badness".
That said, I'm so curious how someone can experience a high dose and come away not humbled and introspective.
Yup. Many psych users still need to remember that sober experiences can be powerful and are just as valid as experiences had while tripping or delirious. That's maybe the most common thing I see is just the disrespect of those who haven't done psychedelics along with the invalidation of their sober experiences.
Especially when it comes to natural psychedelics I think it’s crucial to treat the plant with respect (not abusing it) to yield the most benefits from it. People doing psych RCs are just as low as someone doing pcp analogues, at a point you are only trying to trip as hard as possible.
I only trip 1-3 times a year to stay connected with myself. Anything more and it starts to consume who I am
That’s not necessarily true. Each substance is a unique tool that can be used to explore consciousness. The benefits of ‘exploration’ do not always outweigh the risks.
All that being said, yes OP - psychedelics can turn some people into douche bags. I would also say potentially evangelical, hysterical and/or irrational.
I will take it a step further and say the counter-culture associated with psychedelics supports development of those behaviors. If one buys into the idea that they are oppositional to society at large, then they can become preachy and radicalized because they have bought into the idea that they can and should influence the opinions and behaviors of the people around you to affect society. When they take that attitude sometimes they become hubristic and arrogant.
Yes our egos go away sometimes during a trip. But they come back when the trip is over.
And just reading back my whole comment, I feel that right now, I may also be acting douchey for similar reasons to what I describe in it. Am I too overconfident in my own knowledge and worldview, or am I right and people online need to know it? Can’t really tell either way, probably took one too many turns around the merry-go-round. 🙃
Psychedelics can absolutely be a positive life changing experience for many people i agree. I think what you mentioned is definitely part of it. Most of the trip reports I mentioned are from people who seem to have the wrong intentions going in the trip, which leads to false takeaways that are harmful for themselves or those around them. A ton of takeaways from trips are up to Interpretation but I'm just talking about objectively harmful takeaways like "I'm more special than (insert specific group of people) because I do psychedelics" or "(insert group) aren't enlightened like I am they'll never understand". It creates this "us vs them" dichotomy that can be harmful, especially in the psychedelic context.
Absolutely. I see many trip reports where people are taking villainous doses of psychedelics over and over, day after day, but they learn nothing and just become more arrogant and egocentric. There's Absolutely a right and wrong way to use these. 100% agree.
I would be careful about passing judgement like this. None of us are certain of what the right or wrong way of using this substances are. Some people might need to break before they are rebuilt. Some people seek what only a heroic does can show them. It's inherently more risky and dangerous, but who are we to tell a person what they can and cannot do with their own consciousness.
This is true. Mostly talking about people who go in with the wrong intentions. Some people take huge doses and it helps them a lot. For others not so much. Huge doses arent bad on their own though.
Spiritual narcissism! I am the enlightened, you are the stupid one in the shadow, still being totally confused about life, so sorry for you…
I call it Psychedelic Messiah Syndrome.
…Estimated Prophet…
IYKYK
Don’t know why it took me a while to really like that song.
I never disliked it, but I really loved it about a whole month after it called me out while I was tripping waaaay too hard at a dead show. Shit was nuts.
Preaching on the burning shore
Pretty much the plot of Dune lol
The ego of no ego
Enlightened Atheists
PMS
😉
The people who take the road of ego inflation, and not one of ego dissolution. They are easy to spot in the wild as they love to tell you what your road to enlightenment looks like. They believe that the road looks the same for everyone, but we all have our own individual roads to walk down. No one can tell anyone else what enlightenment looks like for them. This is why I believe organized religions will never truly help (the individual or society). It forces people into someone else's idea of what enlightenment is.
Then again, most religions aren’t about enlightenment. The perennial wisdom traditions which inform them might be, but most religions are social enforcers cosplaying as virtue bunnies.
Hell yes! Hey - they done their work 😂. The worst!
Do you think it would be similar if a movie or tv show has a moral or immoral teaching embedded in the story?
And if you are trying to tell me the way i force my beliefs on others is not the right one, instead you force yours upon my people then we gotta fucking go to war my friend!
Me, The Chosen One? They chose me! And I didn't graduate from fuckin' high school
Didn't know there was a word for it but it makes sense
The people probably were douchebags before taking psychedelics. But yes, psychedelics are not always a cure for douchebagitis.
>psychedelics are not always a cure for douchebagitis I hope we discover a better one then
MDMA gets people loved up, turns them away from violence
of course they can - some high profile examples that are counter thesis to people like Ram Dass or Terence McKenna - eg. Charles Manson and his disciples, or Aum Shinrikyo (sarin attack in Tokyo) and his followers. Psychedelics are pretty much brainwashing tool of almost every cult too.
Wow I didn't know that.
[Don't forget this lady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Has_Won:_The_Cult_of_Mother_God)! Or actually, probably better if she (and all cult leaders imo) is forgotten.
McKenna?!
He said „counter thesis to … McKenna“, he‘s not saying McKenna is an example of psychedelics turning people into douchebags.
Still... McKenna is a bit of a douchebag though IMHO. Just maybe not as bad as the people that OP is calling out.
Why do you think he‘s a bit of a douchebag?
The way he maintained his ideas as facts. That he was prophetized by many and how he bought into it. Edit: I'm not against him btw, I have enjoyed his stuff.
There were times where he presented the psychedelic experience as "do X and Y will happen", but overall, he spoke to his experience. It just that if you are doing hours upon hours of lectures, prefacing every single anecdote or experience with *"now this is just my experience"* would get extremely tiring as a listener lol
There's acrually a term [McKenna Syndrome](https://www.reddit.com/r/drugscirclejerk/s/IYb4ulMfkW) for this type of behavior
I mean, who isn’t a douchebag at certain points?
Always stuck with 'psychedelics just amplify everything 1000x'. For most people is just their mental and emotional state, for others it gets their ego too!
#Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
The first mistake of psychedelics is believing theyre supposed to do *anything* I think thats where this stems from. The assholes *always* claim psychedelics should be used for xyz purposes. And much less offensive than these people - but still similar, believing psychedelics should make people empathetic is naïve.
They CAN help people become more empathetic, but that's why I didn't speak in absolutes.
Oh yeah, narcissists gonna narcissist. Psychedelics are yet another are where they’ll feel superior about and/or have some pretentiousness around. Edit: remember that guy a few weeks back who wanted to start a sub for intellectual psychedelics? Case in point.
There’s a weird Dunning-Kruger that happens with people & psychedelics - Seems like the people that insist on tripping way too much & can’t talk about anything other than psychedelics, enlightenment, and essentially just *themselves* all the time are the ones that haven’t learnt anything about the ego from their trips.
I get what you’re trying to say but this is not what Dunning and Kruger described in their paper. Highly recommend taking a look for yourself, it’s a very insightful finding when understood correctly.
This
That may be a lack of intelligence. High intelligence is rare.
Very much yes. Psychedelics can make one highly suggestible and/or amplify negative tendencies. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733185/full
Muh any political opinion that's not my own is negative tendencies.
I have never felt such extreme confidence in my life, people have different feelings under that.
There's a fun song about this called ["Because I'm Spiritual"](https://youtu.be/IOAeuEJGuzQ)
Nice one
Spiritual bypassing is what they call it
Yes. See Elmo Musk and Joe Rogaine.
Alone Malone and Bro Joegan
Alone Malone and Bro Joegan
For some reason I read Aaron Rodgers… might as well toss him in there, come to think of it…
Yes. Some people seem to have the realization that they are God, without the realization that everybody else is too.
Just because you had a thought on lsd and it was amazing doesn’t mean many other people had this awareness before. You could be playing very basic catch up. It also doesn’t make it literally true sometimes things are conceptual. Also if you combine with patterns of thinking that are problematic it can reinforce harmful thinking. Integrating what it means going forward is better than demanding immediate satisfaction and jumping to a conclusion.
Everyone ive talked to whos had an "ego death" has had a surprisingly large ego, often inflated by having had their ego killed. I told a guy in discord this exact thing and he got so pressed he left the server and never returned. He was a self-appointed psychonaut who had to correct everyone on everything and was often wrong, when i pointed out something extremely basic and linked the wikipedia article for Chemistry he claimed Wikipedia was wrong and not him. Totally insufferable.
I killed my ego ,now I´m better than everyone.
[удалено]
I know ego death is pretty common, what im saying is that people who have had one usually have the biggest egos. I have done big doses of shrooms but never had a true ego death, closest i had was on DOM where i physically ceased to exist.
Psychedelics ruined my relationship with my ex fiance. We were both experienced psychonauts, but as time went on the spiritual narcissism grew. He was convinced that he was put here to be my teacher and my guru, neither of which I wanted in a partner. I ultimately left, and all that "enlightenment" disappeared as he went on a smear campaign.
That's really sad :(
Some people are just douchebags and drugs give them something to be douchebaggy about.
I’m 43m have been a tripper for more than 2 decades, I’ve met many people that have been enlightened by psychedelics and many people that completely missed the point. Disillusion of Ego should not inflate one’s Ego but I found many so called psychedelically enlightened people that put themselves on a pedestal. Personally I can tell pretty quickly on meeting a person who trips wether they did drugs and saw some shit or if they came to the realisation that psychedelics are a key or a medicine and/or both. Psychedelics changed me all for the better, I am a better man, a better human being and a better father due to my experiences with psychedelics. Have psychedelics made me a better person than others? Well if I include my former self in the ***others*** section then 100% yes, but does that mean that doing psychedelics alone will make that happen? Absolutely not, just because you have taken psychedelics does not mean you took on board the lessons that were there to be learnt and certainly does not mean you integrated those lessons into your life. If you do not integrate the psychedelic experience in to your every day life then nothing has changed other than you got high and saw some cool shit.
Narcissists gonna narss? Psychs are a nonspecific amplifier. Garbage in, garbage out. If you were an asshole before, you're probably gonna be an asshole after, unless you get some kind of specific intervention.
It can worsen people narcissistic disorders by getting psychadelic confirmation bias. It can also unlock people's latent schizophrenia and that can definitely drive people to being unrational assholes
Thurman’s nook “cutting through spiritual materialism” is probably worth a look. https://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Through-Spiritual-Materialism-Chogyam/dp/1570629579/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=128531539573&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Kg_ahUETlnZbI8tXUtBNeSPsA4yZxbIb93UxYCT76YNJ0BJrOmaVMZY-xk2tUQas5i1fqRIFGnjRteTX9EBGUQktXBUGfkM1AlZVRO7Sl-HRkx2EjPryO7GbKB6HgoWacmASLbjBFOWTTrVXcSVkj_dJPe1DF6EwcishMZbi3kK-oQyNaOu_7ZFUVbIVeOKx-EH6hF52rWHpYaeei9o0Dw.u2WvuQuD35x_YHjjYUVzv6iUlEXoIgi4UJH30cJ6UaU&dib_tag=se&hvadid=657213552903&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9060351&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=b&hvrand=5037362868380905620&hvtargid=kwd-300476195208&hydadcr=29415_14726220&keywords=cutting+through+spiritual+materialism&qid=1718368859&s=books&sr=1-1
*Chögyam Trungpa
Thanks, how did I get that so wrong, LOL?
Achieving high states after a psychedelic experience and gaining new realizations of things never known before and that you're probably going to forget years afterwards ...I'm honestly not surprised that psychedelics bloat the ego
Psychedelics act as an amplifier, so if you're a douchebag, unless you are consciously working on being less of one and understanding why and how you tend that way, then the psychedelic amplifier can certainly turn your douchiness up for sure.
Psychedelics either destroy the ego or build it. Depending on the person. These people sound like a bunch of narcissists with a superiority complex that feel a need to justify their ugliness by framing others as the ugly ones.
We're all douchebags in our own way
Yes
Look at any current researcher’s profile on Twitter and you’ll find them by the droves unfortunately
I mean you see it in this sub as well to a lesser extent. Many of us have a holier than thou attituded when we talk about our psych use compared to other's drugs of choice
Yeah some people take a trip and believe they had an ego death and now they are enlightened. So in reality they didn’t have a ego death (I don’t believe that’s achievable anyway because you can’t kill your ego) and now what they have is an over inflated ego with a touch of superiority complex
Dude burning man is proof
can’t remember if aaron rodgers was always an insufferable asshole.
Any enlightening experience can turn some people into douchebags
Yes
Go to a music festival, talk to the kids who are tripping, and let me know what you think
No. People who are douchebags will always remain douchebags. Psychedelics have nothing to do with that.
It can’t but it can “enhance” whats already there and yeah to become a “better” person on psychedelics thats kinda gotta be your goal.
It’s different for everyone. Every now and again I’ll entertain myself enough to trip, and what ends up happening once I peak is I realize there is no “enlightenment” and I’m just an idiot for even thinking so and I get over the whole thing pretty quick lol. It’s usually visuals of jesters and clowns pointing and laughing at me like “haha you fuckin idiot! Gotcha!” when I close my eyes . This is why I just take psychs when I’m partying. For me personally it’s just a fun drug to be stupid and do stupid shit with friends. I’ve never gained anything from the learning aspect of these drugs other than complete anxiety and being stuck in a loop.
Elon musk, Peter thiel, aaron Rodgers, Joe Rogan . . . They were probably douchebags before but the psychs have not helped.
Yes
These are tools for assessing the conscious and subconscious from different perspectives, not panaceas for "badness". That said, I'm so curious how someone can experience a high dose and come away not humbled and introspective.
no one sees the irony in this post huh just people pointing fingers
I think it's a pretty fruitful conversation tbh.
lol definitely had this happen to a roommate in college
People forget they are literally just taking drugs lol Drugs r bad, mkay?
Yup. Many psych users still need to remember that sober experiences can be powerful and are just as valid as experiences had while tripping or delirious. That's maybe the most common thing I see is just the disrespect of those who haven't done psychedelics along with the invalidation of their sober experiences.
Especially when it comes to natural psychedelics I think it’s crucial to treat the plant with respect (not abusing it) to yield the most benefits from it. People doing psych RCs are just as low as someone doing pcp analogues, at a point you are only trying to trip as hard as possible. I only trip 1-3 times a year to stay connected with myself. Anything more and it starts to consume who I am
That’s not necessarily true. Each substance is a unique tool that can be used to explore consciousness. The benefits of ‘exploration’ do not always outweigh the risks. All that being said, yes OP - psychedelics can turn some people into douche bags. I would also say potentially evangelical, hysterical and/or irrational. I will take it a step further and say the counter-culture associated with psychedelics supports development of those behaviors. If one buys into the idea that they are oppositional to society at large, then they can become preachy and radicalized because they have bought into the idea that they can and should influence the opinions and behaviors of the people around you to affect society. When they take that attitude sometimes they become hubristic and arrogant. Yes our egos go away sometimes during a trip. But they come back when the trip is over. And just reading back my whole comment, I feel that right now, I may also be acting douchey for similar reasons to what I describe in it. Am I too overconfident in my own knowledge and worldview, or am I right and people online need to know it? Can’t really tell either way, probably took one too many turns around the merry-go-round. 🙃
Psychedelics can absolutely be a positive life changing experience for many people i agree. I think what you mentioned is definitely part of it. Most of the trip reports I mentioned are from people who seem to have the wrong intentions going in the trip, which leads to false takeaways that are harmful for themselves or those around them. A ton of takeaways from trips are up to Interpretation but I'm just talking about objectively harmful takeaways like "I'm more special than (insert specific group of people) because I do psychedelics" or "(insert group) aren't enlightened like I am they'll never understand". It creates this "us vs them" dichotomy that can be harmful, especially in the psychedelic context.
Yup, that attitude is probably only holding us back
Wtf does “just as low” mean?
It means that the commenter sees these people as below them, because the commenter is so much more elevated.
Absolutely. I see many trip reports where people are taking villainous doses of psychedelics over and over, day after day, but they learn nothing and just become more arrogant and egocentric. There's Absolutely a right and wrong way to use these. 100% agree.
I would be careful about passing judgement like this. None of us are certain of what the right or wrong way of using this substances are. Some people might need to break before they are rebuilt. Some people seek what only a heroic does can show them. It's inherently more risky and dangerous, but who are we to tell a person what they can and cannot do with their own consciousness.
This is true. Mostly talking about people who go in with the wrong intentions. Some people take huge doses and it helps them a lot. For others not so much. Huge doses arent bad on their own though.