I’m not the doer.

https://youtu.be/QojrXv5iVEM

For me, psilocybin wasn’t even enough. I did one round in a therapy setting with MDMA, 5gs of mushrooms. Then later another round with just 5g of mushrooms. Mostly just laying in bed, listening to specific music with the facilitator making sure I stay hydrated and all that. I cried a bit but it didn’t feel like it got quite there. Mostly it was boring. I was quite frustrated because there was so much hype about psychedelic therapy but of course I was the one super special boy on whom even a high dose of mushrooms didn’t accomplish much. Because of course it can’t be that easy for me.

I’m sure it was minor long lasting effects though but it wasn’t the dramatic shift I was secretly hoping for.

I however did get the opportunity to do 5-meo and that… did things. Just the handshake round made me feel the worst possible emotional pain. Then the second round made me scream, dry-vomit and convulse. I thought I shat and pissed myself (thankfully not, though the facilitator said it wouldn’t have been the first time and it would’ve been fine). I felt like my whole being was put through a blender. Then somehow I still did the final round which was more of the same. I was with a competent facilitator and a few friends and weirdly, it felt good to have people witness it all without judgment. In fact I think that was one of the most important factors because it was other people that had taught me to suppress and push everything down. Having a different set of people hold space while I went through that all (and provide hugs after) was profoundly healing.

Afterwards for the first time in my life I actually felt healthily empty inside. The sense of stuck emotions was gone. It didn’t magically make me happy, I seem to just have a chronic depression, but at least I didn’t (and still don’t) feel dragged down by unprocessed feelings. I don’t have this constant sense of “something is wrong”.

Or does it just make you want to dismiss me as some tiresome armchair shrink who clearly needs better creative outlets than Lemmy.

At least I think it’s nice to see people here give thoughtful replies every now and again. I see way too many people on Lemmy who fancy themselves smart but really they have just memorized the latest trending science news without actually thinking about how any of it connects to anything.

Edit: there does seem to be a larger percentage of thoughtful people here than certain other platforms though. Or maybe the smaller community allows for more visibility at least.

This applies to humans as well. We view the world through the lens of our past experiences and the language(s) we have to reflect on those experiences. On broad terms we have “consensus reality” (which is frequently confused with “objectivity”) most people agree on but seeing as there isn’t an universal language that perfectly captures human experience, we do live in subtly different realities. Or sometimes dramatically different ones.

Surrender.

Not resignation. Surrender.

(Several years of reading philosophy, meditation, Zen Buddhism, resolving mental health issues, trauma work, therapy, psychedelic therapy, going through my personal hell, dropping self-hatered etc. but you can skip the hard stuff and just accept that all you ever amount to is the dash between your birthday and time of death. It’s very liberating once you stop believing the idea that you, or anything really, is “supposed” to be special. Or indeed that there even is a “you” - that’s just another way your mind is keeping busy. Vast majority of people take the long way around though.)

There was a good podcast on the political activism part recently: https://shows.acast.com/tantra-illuminated-with-dr-christopher-wallis/episodes/finding-freedom-in-troubled-times-with-tina-rasmussen

Welcome. I recommend you check out this book: https://adyashanti.opengatesangha.org/store/publications/books/falling-into-grace-535 (don’t let the title get in the way, it’s more Zen Buddhist). I imagine you can find it from a library.

It was helpful for me during some really rough times.

Of course, ‘everyone can be artist’. But wouldn’t the lack of the dramatic lead to a lesser chance of ‘making it big’?

Depends, because you’re not going to be conveying your experience perfectly anyway. It first goes through your own interpretative lens to the art, and then the art goes through the viewer’s lens. Big and dramatic emotions are easier… yes and as such may be more predictably marketable. But it’s a fickle business. Of course this is a concern only if marketability is how you measure “making it big”. We have a lot of art these days that’s easy to get into… and easy to drop. If you want world to remember you (Gogh wasn’t appreciated until after his death), you can try to convey something deeper and more complex.

I am having a hard time recalling positive experiences right now, especially ones that are “vibrant” in any way.

There’s vibrancy in deepest depression and the most boring line in the blandest grocery store. That’s for an artist to discover. But I’m not saying you should or should not take meds. But depression tends to lead to bad outcomes, and the world is full of depressed artists who didn’t make it.

Taking antidepressants does not have to reduce your creativity. Artists express their experience with their art. Sometimes it does it so well that people observing the art (through the lens of their conditioning) get moved. More damatic emotions get noticed more. But art can capture subtler experiences too. Antidepressants won’t remove your capacity to experience, it just changes the quality of the experience. Pay attention to all the qualities of your experience and you’ll notice it’s not just the intense ones that have vibrancy. You can convey that in art beautifully as well.

The suffering artist is a known trope but don’t think it’s a prophecy.

Hell yeah

There’s a persistent idea that the ability to suppress one’s feelings = sign of good mental health.

You’d have to settle for close enough here.

This is my point. We can’t do it exactly, we just approximate. With every single experience we have, we can only approximately communicate it to other people. But here’s the kicker: does thinking about the taste of water feel like you’re actually drinking water? If you were parched in a desert, would thinking about water really hard actually bring the experience of water? Obviously not.

Once you have experienced something, thinking back to it, you are already kind of approximating it to yourself. You can’t manifest the exact experience even for yourself. Let alone to others.

I’m just highlighting this because it’s a pretty significant thing to get in this world where we are communicating by text a lot, and being very quick to judge other people’s experiences. Not saying you’re doing that though.

But how would I know if our experience of the taste of water is the same?

What does water taste like?

That’s a pretty tall order. How do you confirm that you objectively share the same experience if you can only ever access your own subjective experience?

You don’t have to but it’s good to be aware of if you’re really saving time or giving more of your energy to something other than your own needs.

No, but it seems unusually aggressive for very little reason.

Not nihilism, Nondual Buddhism.

Lots of psychoanalysis in this thread.

A lot of things, but they are “just” beliefs. They’re just narratives about narratives about narratives but they may be useful. I believe my hand will burn if I put it on a candle flame. Which is an intense experience I’m inclined to avoid. But it’s neither a good or bad experience. I’m not going to go telling people that they should believe as I do. But I can tell them that by my assessment, it’s pretty damn likely they’ll experience pain if they put their hand on the flame. Up to them what they do with that.

In terms of my worldview, I “believe” that we’re just being, existence, experience. “Matter” is a story. “Spirit” is a story. Both camps demand an opposition to another which is inherently dualistic and as such, misleading and pointless. Putting any of this in words is silly because each word in itself is just a story, a concept, a belief. Best but deeply flawed description of reality I can muster at the moment is that it’s an experience of a free fall in total darkness.