How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

Известно, что психоделические видения очень трудно выразить словами, и любая попытка сделать это неизбежно оборачивается актом насилия по отношению к тому, что было увидено и прочувствовано, потому как все это в основе своей является чем-то, что или предшествует языку, или не нуждается в нем, или, как сказали бы студенты-мистики, вообще невыразимо. Короче говоря, меня захлестывали эмоции во всей их новорожденной наготе, беззащитные в резких лучах испытующего взгляда и (особенно) безжалостного блеска иронии. Поэтому банальности, которым, казалось бы, самое место на поздравительных открытках компании "Холлмарк", высвечиваются здесь с силой откровения самой истины.
Любовь суть все
Прекрасно, но чему ты еще научился?
Чему еще? Нет, ты должно быть, не расслышал: любовь и есть все!

...с помощью мескалина Хаксли получил непосредственный доступ в царства существования, известные только мистикам и великим визионерам, которых в мировой истории было не так уж и много. Эти миры всегда рядом с нами, но в моменты будничной жизни их отделяет от нашего сознания "редукционный клапан" будничного бодрствующего сознания, своего рода фильтр, пропускающий через себя "скудный ручеек сознания", необходимый нам для выживания. Все прочее — роскошь и излишество, вроде поэзии, но мужчины, тем не менее, умирают из-за них каждый день, вернее 1 не из-за них, а из-за их отсутствия.

"Грибы научили меня тому, что существует тесная взаимосвязь всех форм жизни с молекулярной матрицей, которая у нас с ними является общей. Я больше не чувствую себя некой оболочкой по имени Пол Стеметс, в которую завернута моя человеческая жизнь. Нет, я — часть того бесконечного потока молекул, который пронизывает природу и, подобно реке, течет через нее. Мне, пусть временно, дан голос, дано сознание, но я, тем не менее, чувствую себя часть непрерывного потока звездной пыли, внутри которого я рожден и к которому я вернусь в конце этой жизни".

Пол Стеметс, миколог

Если трансцендентальный опыт вызывается молекулой, способной проницать наш мозг и природный мир растений и грибов, то природа, вероятно, не так уж нема и безъязыка, как это твердит Наука, и где-то там, в природе или в других мирах, существует "Дух", кто бы и как его ни определял, то есть нечто вечно сущностное, имманентное — вера, которой до сих пор придерживаются представители бесчисленных архаичных культур. То, что моему (духовно обедненному) уму кажется вполне приемлемой основой для разочарования в мире, уму более психоделически подкованному представляется неопровержимым доказательством его несокрушимого очарования.

•Psychosis refers to a condition where an individual loses touch with reality, often characterized by symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking. The exploration of these drugs led to the discovery that mental health conditions like psychosis could have a neurochemical basis.

•participants ranked their psilocybin experience as one of the most meaningful in their lives, comparable "to the birth of a first child or death of a parent."

•along with the feeling of ineffability, the conviction that some profound objective truth has been disclosed to you is a hallmark of the mystical experience. People feel they have been let in on a deep secret of the universe, and they cannot be shaken from that conviction. No doubt this is why some of the people who have such an experience go on to found religions

•For most volunteers, their psilocybin journeys had taken place ten or fifteen years earlier, and yet their effects were still keenly felt, in some cases on a daily basis.

•some people think of their lives as before and after psilocybin.

•Psilocybes are saprophytes, living off dead plant matter and dung. They also prosper in the ecological catastrophes: floods, volcanoes

•The Stoned Ape Theory is a speculative hypothesis suggesting that the consumption of psilocybin mushrooms by early hominids played a role in the rapid evolution of the human brain,

Core Ideas of the Stoned Ape Theory: Terence McKenna proposed that psilocybin mushrooms, which were likely consumed during foraging, stimulated neural connections and enhancing brain function.

•Michael Beug says that many animals are known to eat psilocybin mushrooms, including horses, cattle, and dogs. Some animals appear to enjoy an occasional change in consciousness too.

•The brain is primed to recognize certain shapes, like grids, tunnels, and spirals, because they are common in nature (e.g., spiderwebs, tree branches, rivers). During altered states, these primal templates may surface in consciousness as a kind of "default imagery."

•"projection" is probably the psychological term for this phenomenon: when we mix our emotions with certain objects that then reflect those feelings back to us so that they appear to glisten with meaning.

•the psychedelic experience is highly "constructed." If you are told you will have a spiritual experience, chances are pretty good that you will, and vice versa

•When researchers administered standardized psychiatric tests to volunteers on LSD—such as the Rorschach ink blots or the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test—the results mirrored those of psychotics and, specifically, schizophrenics.

•Stanislav Grof, who trained as a psychoanalyst, found that under moderate doses of LSD his patients would quickly establish a strong transference with the therapist, recover childhood traumas, give voice to buried emotions, and, in some cases, actually relive the experience of their birth—our first trauma

•in 1960s therapists and researchers began holding LSD "sessions" in their homes for friends and colleagues, though exactly how these sessions could be distinguished from parties is difficult to say.

•Depending on individual brain chemistry and receptor activity, LSD can sometimes produce effects that overlap with MDMA's serotonin-enhancing properties. LSD can deepen emotional connections to others, similar to MDMA.

•1g of dried mushrooms (≈ 5–10 mg psilocybin) is roughly equivalent to 75–150 micrograms of LSD in terms of intensity (which is equal to one tab)

•it turns out that Bayesian inference breaks down in some people: schizophrenics, children and, according to some neuroscientists, people on high doses of psychedelics drugs

•Psychedelics can induce psychosis-like states, such as hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. Psychedelics may trigger manic or depressive episodes. Psychedelics can amplify generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, phobias. Psychedelics can bring suppressed traumatic memories to the surface. Psychedelics can induce intense feelings of detachment from self and reality.

•consciousness is the unmistakable sense we have that we are, or possess a self that has experiences.

•The DMN is a brain network associated with self-referential thinking, the "ego," and mind-wandering. Overactivity in the DMN has been linked to conditions like depression, anxiety, and rumination. fMRI showed that psychedelics suppress activity in the DMN, leading to a temporary "dissolution of the ego" and detachment from their usual thought patterns.

•Under normal circumstances, the DMN helps filter and organize information, keeping emotionally intense or disruptive material in the unconscious.

•Psychedelics stimulate serotonin 2A receptors, which are abundant in the visual and auditory cortices. This leads to heightened sensitivity and awareness of sensory input, making subtle details in music or visual stimuli more noticeable.

•Psychedelics alter consciousness by disorganizing brain activity and increasing the amount of entropy in the brain. The brain operates with greater flexibility and interconnectedness

•the psychedelic experience is an aid to creativity—to thinking "outside the box"

•The long-term fate of the novel connections formed during the psychedelic experience—whether they prove durable or evanescent—might depend on whether we recall and, in effect, exercise them after the experience ends.

•Alison Gopnik proposes we regard the mind of the young child as another kind of "altered state"

•A key element of brain developmental process is the suppression of entropy, with all of its implications, both good and bad. The system cools, and hot searches become the exception rather than the rule. Consciousness narrows as we get older. Adults have congealed in their beliefs and are hard to shift. If you want to understand what an expanded consciousness looks like, all you have to do is have tea with a four-year-old.

•Buddhists believe that attachment is at the root of all forms of mental suffering

•First of all, psychedelics don't offer any intellectual property: psilocybin is a product of nature, and the patent on LSD expired decades ago. Secondly, Big Pharma mostly invests in the pills you have to take every day. Why would it invest in a pill patients might only need to take once in a lifetime? Psychiatry faces a similar dilemma: it too is wedded to interminable therapies, whether that means the daily antidepressant or the weekly psychotherapy session.

•Integration is essential to making sense of the experience, whether in or out of the medical context. Or else it remains just a drug experience.