DMT, Derealization, and Depersonalization

61 点作者 superb-owl将近 2 年前

19 条评论

RyanAdamas将近 2 年前

That happened to me, only I was 16, and it was before Google was around to tell me what happened. I would later come to find it was some form of ego death; though I've never heard it put the way the interviewee puts it, but he describes it well. It messed me up for almost a decade. It was this immediate change, not unlike when someone dies, only no one else believes that person is gone, only you realize it; for everyone else that person still exists and is just getting weirder. Kinda hard to explain to people what happened without them being dismissive cause they once took lsd in a van at a festival. Its not the same as a bad trip, and for me there was no recovery.Eh, shit happens and then you die. No one tells you, you lose parts along the way, too. But, you do.

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throwanem将近 2 年前

Nobody wants to discuss potential harms in a grassroots advocacy movement for legalization or normalization - we saw the same thing in decades past with cannabis.The reasons are understandable, but the results aren't great. I would rather see more openness up front even at the cost of complicating the message, than see folks end up with this kind of trouble because advocates chose not to be as honest about the risks as about the benefits.

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jmfldn将近 2 年前

I'm not sure if I've had these exact experiences, but something related perhaps, albeit milder. When I was in my early twenties I consumed a lot of cannabis in the form of hash cakes one night and it triggered a panic attack. What was scary about the panic attack was this feeling of the world around me feeling dreamlike, or like I was in a dream I couldn't wake up from. It was like there's normally this safe ground we all walk on, and we don't know its even there, and that implicit feeling we all carry with us can drift away. It wasn't psychosis, I think it was just a by-product of anxiety, which in itself is a very mind altering experience. If you've ever had a panic attack or experienced severe anxiety states you'll know what I mean. It's effectively a bad trip, your perception is altered by the cortisol and adrenaline coursing through your brain and the resulting mental exhaustion and depressed emotions that can arise alongside it.I was predisposed to anxiety already, and I think this experience led me into developing mild to moderate panic disorder which was driven by fear of experiencing this state again. So it become a vicious circle. A fear of fear which, ironically, became a trigger for the feared thing. I believe it was made worse by my highly philosophical brain, and a deep immersion in existential philosophies. In particular Buddhism. So I was already used to a worldview which was challenging existentially let's say. Looking back, I was probably too young at the time, and maybe too anxious, to be immersed in all this naval gazing given my mental health.Decades later I'm OK, but I have residual panic feelings surfacing sometimes. The difference now is that I don't identify with them, I just see them as fleeting feelings producing a distorted sense of reality. The secret with anxiety, for me at least, is to not care if you feel anxious and to let it pass.

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ZitchDog将近 2 年前

I have tried psychedelics at high dose and never had any issues with derealization. However when I started meditating 1/hr per day I started noticing things just started seeming "fake" and like I wasn't a "real person". Backing off to meditating 30 minutes daily, it completely went away.

jokowueu将近 2 年前

I have had derelization from acute stress but it was never disturbing to me and it went away when my environment changedThrough the years I have dabbled with psychadelics with no downsides or upsides untill I decided to smoke cannabis for the first time , I had a very strong reaction that put me in depersonalization hell, it lasted 4 years , thankfully this was a few months before the lockdown .I was surprised to learn how many people have had depersonalization from cannabis after just one hit

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pyentropy将近 2 年前

I've had horrible DR and DP as a child. It runs in families with anxiety disorders and personality disorders.No matter how many times it happened, it was always equally scary - feeling like a passive observer of a movie starring some piece of flesh and bones as the main character, feeling completely separate from that body and unable to control its decisions. The episodes usually lasted <30 minutes.I don't know about its occurrence in psychedelics, but in my case it always occurred after periods of extreme emotions (seeing a classmate die and being aware of my own mortality, being rejected by some 'friends' in school, and a few others). The way I see it (and some neuroscientists claim), the brain shuts the perception of "self" in order to stop intense emotional pain.

isoprophlex将近 2 年前

Poor guy. That seems like it was totally preventable, and not the easiest way to enlightenment or confronting anxiety.I'm definitely not victim blaming here, yet I feel that this has to be reiterated often..: People, please never take unknown doses of drugs and/or have other people pressure you into taking drugs and/or do drugs in a shitty setting. You will probably have a bad time.

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photochemsyn将近 2 年前

This effect is not uncommon with respect to powerful psychedelics but it does have a mechanistic neurological explanation which in turn helps explain the psychological (or spiritual if you like) knock-on effects. It's really the same kind of thing underlying optical illusions, such as the dancing grid dots illusion:<a href="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ScintillatingGridIllusion.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ScintillatingGridIllusion.html</a>Fundamentally your brain is interpreting signals coming in from your optic nerves at all times so you're not really 'directly experiencing reality', you're interpreting and processing a stream of data and constructing a map of reality from that data. This is usually all done unconsciously, but what psychedelics do at a mechanistic level is interfere with the neuronal processing of that data. You might get a crossover of memories feeding into the visual stream at some level of processing, hence 'seeing visions', or the sound channel might get mixed with the visual channel ('seeing sounnds and hearing colors').It's not too surprising that this can have profound effects on people's psychology if they were not expecting or aware of this underlying mechanism. It's a concept in philosophy, as well, I believe it's called 'radical skepticism' or some such, the belief that nothing is real, and is in the same category as the simulation hypothesis, i.e. the belief we are in a Matrix VR world. This could plausibly lead to dissociation from normal goal-oriented behavior and result in full blown mental illness in extreme cases.Personally, I don't really see the difference between 'base reality' and 'perfect simulation' if there's no scientific method to distinguish between the two. If a flaming angel (or UFO) appears in the sky above me, I'll still try to collect its electomagnetic spectrum. Similarly, most people can recognize when they're under the influence of a drug and when they're completely sober - at least, with experience. A first-time user could definitely get these two confused, with dangerous consequences, hence all the warnings about set and setting, trip-sitters, etc.Regardless, those with a fragile grasp on reality or who are lacking a solid psychological core self-identity should definitely think twice about taking powerful psychedelics.

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quechimba将近 2 年前

I wouldn't recommend anyone to smoke DMT or changa, it's way too strong and it's difficult to make sense out of the experience afterwards.Ayahuasca is an amazing medicine. If you decide to do it, do it in the Peruvian Amazon, read the reviews carefully of each retreat center before you decide on which one to go to. Follow the diet and any other restrictions, this is especially important AFTER drinking ayahuasca. The shaman will tell you what to avoid and for how long. Don't use kambo, bufo or rapé before, during or after the retreat, it will interfere with the treatment. A lot of vendors in Iquitos will try to convince you that it's good to combine rapé with ayahuasca, but it isn't. Ayahuasca works best alone. Basically you should only be doing ayahuasca (and mapacho if you like to smoke).It's a very powerful medicine and if you drink with someone with bad intentions it can be very dangerous.

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jeffscottwise将近 2 年前

I've had these experiences myself, mostly in the context of meditation, and they are terrifying. They are also immensely beneficial and similar to the very states of consciousness that myself and many others spend hundreds/thousands of hours trying to attain. I'm sure that if myself from two years ago was transported into my current reality/experience I would freak out.The issue with psychedelics is that they induce these perspectives, but without an understanding of what they mean and/or why they are beneficial. What Buddhism teaches us (and what each meditator has to prove to themselves!!) is that the nature of reality is not what we think. In fact, (1) nothing is permanent, (2) nothing has substance, and (3) nothing is in control of anything else.These three characteristics of reality are so far away from and in such contrast to our normal, everyday conception of reality, that you can witness these characteristics directly and still not believe them. It's because you are believing your thoughts instead. And that's normally fine, because they are naturally trying to protect you from what you don't understand.Your thinking is what make the "emptiness" terrifying. That's why most meditation practices focus (albeit not always explicitly) on a balance of insight into emptiness with more happiness and peace-oriented practices such as lovingkindness and samatha. That way, when you have insights into things not being as real as you thought, you know that it's okay, but you also feel that it's okay.It's really unfortunate for Matias, but perhaps some insight into the theory behind meditation is actually what is needed here. The thoughts about the experience are the problem, not the experience itself. The correct solution is of course whatever Matias intuitively feels is best. Perhaps this state of consciousness can never be healed/harmonized, but correcting the problematic habits of thought (not following those three characteristics) may be easier than trying to undo the entire state of consciousness. I am certainly wishing him the absolute best :)

imaginary_unit将近 2 年前

I would assume a bad trip can cause PTSD not unlike other events that are usually associated with PTSD.

robblbobbl将近 2 年前

Interesting read and definitely related <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death</a>

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whalesalad将近 2 年前

I had the opposite experience with psychedelics. I was dissociated from myself for many many years and mushrooms/meditation over the course of a year helped me find my true self.

obsequiosity将近 2 年前

When it talked about perinatal experience something clicked for me. I've dabbled in mushrooms and Vipassana and after I left a meditation center I had that same spiritual emergency. But when I did sensory deprivation floats and practiced Vipassana in there, the death anxiety and derealization went away. I had to come back to attachments too but emerging from a pod that's warm and moist did help. Perinatal integration, perhaps.

throwaway121abc将近 2 年前

This really hits home with me.I didn't read it, but in certain circumstances I think psychedelics work against you. Something similar happened to me and it feels like the last year has been hard because I've been a mix of depressed and apathetic. Like my liveliness disappeared. I'm speaking up because I wish I heard this before... that being said, here's a hypothesis why it goes wrong or right.The key is that there is a difference between: 1) being high 2) really feeling itFor example, depending on how they make the Aya, you can sometimes be very high, but not feel it in the body. I think this uneventful experience translates to the real world afterwards. So your very high but nothing mystical happened.If psychedelics ever do have a place in society, we should try for experiences (thru brew ingredients) that make the person feel like something profound happened. These can be the hardest experiences (or amazing), but not doing it this way may be worse- you feel derealized/apathetic/callous.If we're not careful, there is going to be a backlash around it. Or worse, some people will fade and we'll lose some of our culture. Let's be careful, study the effects, and make it work!

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helsinki将近 2 年前

Is it just me or does DMT have one or the worst tastes / smells that exist?

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slibhb将近 2 年前

60% of posts in every HN thread about psychedelics are whackos peddling fake knowledge.To me, the interesting question is whether this special mix of new-age spiritual bullshit and two-points-make-a-line, post-hoc reasoning is caused by psychedelic-use or if people who think this way are merely attracted to drugs. Or both. Further research should hone in on this important question.

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raydiatian将近 2 年前

This genuinely seems like a psychedelics hit piece. This joombah mentions taking psychedelics with zero preparation: alone, on a whim, without concern for dosage. For real? I have no sympathy for him. Nobody is this naive, and if he is perhaps it’s Mother Nature doing her magic.

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agnos将近 2 年前

I've had similar experiences with psychedelics. It seems like once you lose touch with some sort of "self-image", it can be very hard to get back. Wish this was talked about more.The first and most pronounced depersonalization experience I've had was with mushrooms. I had taken ~2g of dried mushrooms and was feeling pretty good, so I decided to take a walk in the park near my apartment. Gradually I started feeling like the boundary between my self and the outside world was getting fuzzier. My body felt like a machine that existed as part of a larger machine.Then, suddenly, I thought: who is the driver of this machine? If I'm the machine, what is driving it? I felt like I was taking a walk in the park with a VR headset on. I wanted to take off the VR headset and experience "true" reality. I kept asking myself this question, shedding layers of self-identity, until I reached a state of absolute nothingness. Absolute, zero, blackness. It was probably only a brief second, but in that moment time didn't seem to exist. I didn't seem to exist.The actual experience of the "absolute nothingness" wasn't bad per se, but integrating it back into daily life was a struggle. It felt like nothing made sense. I "remembered" who I was, but I couldn't seem to just immerse myself in that person again. The layers of my self-identity didn't feel real anymore. Nothing felt like it had a reason for existing. Everything was arbitrary.For a while after that experience, daily life became a struggle. I didn't have the motivation to do anything. Talking to people was hard because I felt everyone was wearing a mask of sorts. It's also hard to understand this sort of DP/DR unless you've experienced it. Like the article, I remember discovering the terms "depersonalization" and "derealization" from desperate Google searches. It gave me a bit of relief to just be able to put labels on the experience. I read about "ego death", which also gave me some perspective.I also started developing physical symptoms. The explanation is probably just stress/cortisol, but it seemed like the cells in my body also suffered from this lack of subjective identity. I developed chronic inflammation, an autoimmune condition, and had trouble sleeping.Gradually, over a year or so, I got better, I think due to gradually forgetting about the experience. Still, I don't think I ever returned to the person I was before. It seems like there will always be a part of me that "refuses to drink the Kool-aid" -- that can't fully subscribe to my ego's self-identity anymore.That being said, I don't regret the experience, as I think there was some sort of truth in it. But I do wish stories like this were talked about more. It's not about avoiding "bad trips", but finding a way to integrate it into your life.