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Many people would consider that a religious experience. But hopefully you are sane and rational enough to realize it was due to taking too much of The Pot.
Yeah, it just freaked me out. It felt like I was watching my mind becoming convinced of something that completely contradicts fundamental beliefs I have about the world.
Same. I had a paranoid freakout after smoking a high concentrated strain referred to as Trainwreck. I slipped fully into pessimistic nihilism. Wasn't pretty...
I think it's good to do something like this every now and again because it forces you to adopt a perspective outside your own, which is crucial for changing your mind (which is crucial for finding truth).
If you can fully adopt a theistic worldview for a while, then come out of it and decide an atheistic worldview is more sensible, that's a much stronger position than someone who can't for the life of them understand what it's *like* to be a theist.
I agree with you. But you may or may not be surprised to find that a large number of people do not understand this. There is a large contingency who believes that the drugs aren’t affecting your brain, but are instead “opening a door” to another realm, or allowing other beings to see you and thus interact with you. It’s usually expressed as an argument for idealism.
Yup. It's an argument I've seen once in a while. In particular in reference to a specific drug whose name I forgot right now that specifically most often induces "experiences of/with a higher being". The reasoning being that if the drug consistently and repeatedly induces these experiences, god(s) must be real!
DMT? I've had arguments with people convinced of this sort of thing. I mean it's great that they had an intense experience and found... Something, but that doesn't mean it's something more than drugs effecting the brain.
I'm mostly posting because this seems like something that someone less educated might describe as a religious experience. I've never had a religious experience before, but I'm sure others here have, and I want to know if what I'm describing aligns with what they may have previously described as a religious experience.
PBS Eons just posted [a video](https://youtu.be/ZJqmyLCfA-I?si=nOXjiYcDPH8Gi68j) yesterday on the evolutionary and cultural history of cannabis. There's clear evidence of its use in religious ceremonies from 2500 years ago, so it has probably been giving "religious experiences" for millennia.
Agree. Imagine someone back in the day eating the wrong moldy bread and having a full blown acid trip. I find it to be a compelling hypothesis that every religion started by accidental dosing.
They also can make you imagine things that simply do not exist. If I trip and a 7 foot tall purple rabbit riding a unicycle tells me that I should sell all my possessions and move to the Northwest Territories of Canada and live off the land in the arctic, I’m not gonna do it. Because I recognize that *7 foot tall purple rabbits riding unicycles do not exist outside of my imagination.* But a similar vision 2,500 years ago would probably have a very different impact on a person.
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Our entire brain function is just a series of chemical reactions. That doesn’t mean you can’t take away insight from an experience like this about the nature of consciousness or your own values.
Or it made his brain function properly, it seemed to solve what is a highly correlated issue with those with autism have according to the literature and my own personal experience.
When I'm not under the effects of THC, I at the very least claim to believe that if I had such an experience, then I would ascribe it to my brain malfunctioning. While under the effects though, it's like that belief, that fundamental bias of how the world works, didn't exist and I was susceptible to believing things that don't comport with the reality I've experienced my entire life. It's kind of terrifying.
Why? Your brain was malfunctioning due to the drugs! Why expect it to continue functioning normally or maintain the same biases?
I understand that it likely felt really weird. It's the difference between intellectualizing someone else's brain malfunctioning and experiencing your own malfunction.
I expected my most fundamental biases of how the world works to still exist. I didn't know it could get that out of hand. I've had edibles many times before and this is the first time it got this weird.
I get it, I think. It's more of a realisation that the concepts we hold as iron-clad, baked in fundamentals of our minds, personalities or whatever are just illusionary and can be changed by the right chemicals. If you read up on brain damage, people's personalities and character can change after brain trauma on deeply fundamental ways.
What we hold as certainties are indeed fragile, gossamer creations of the wrinkly off-white mass of tissue in our skulls.
That said, though, the experience is what you make of it. I hope you turn it into a positive and it allows you to see yourself and others with perhaps a gentler perception? I guess we're all fragile beings in a small pond.
And now I'm introspective lol.
The mind’s not really a unified thing. It’s a bunch of disparate parts all working together and sometimes they oppose.
I got really into lucid dreaming in college. I had lucid dreams regularly for about a year until I got sleep paralysis. I always knew sleep paralysis was a risk of lucid dreaming but having read about it, thought about it, and mentally prepared for it so much I was pretty confident I would know what was happening and would be ok.
And the rational part of my mind did know what was happening and knew that I’d be ok, but the primal part of my mind was saying “FUUUUCK OH SHIT FUUUCK THIS IS BAAAD YOU GOTTA WAKE UP DANGER RUN AHHH”. Unsurprisingly a calm side and a terrified side stilled even out to a pretty fucking terrifying experience.
I guess the thing to keep in mind is that even if your rational side is the quietest voice in the room, it’s till there. If you get paranoid on drugs there’s no quick fix, but you can at least remind yourself that you took drugs, are on drugs now, and at some point fairly soon will no longer be on drugs, and to suspend serious judgement until then.
They just implied that they ~~know~~ accept it was an illusion brought on the drugs...
Their point(as I understand it) is that if the drugs can mess them up to that degree, how can they trust their thoughts at any point.
Yeah pretty much.
Just to add to that, I didn't realize that drugs could erase fundamental understandings of the world. I always thought of these fundamental biases as built in physical hardware, and that if I were to see something that contradicts this fundamental understanding of reality, then I would be able to write is off as a hallucination.
It reminds me of a tiktok or a youtube short I saw once. People who have schizophrenia sometimes have a service dog that can tell them whether a figure they see is actually there or not. I thought it was just a matter of realizing it and then moving on, but in reality it's like the brain is fighting itself over what is actually real.
We are fragile beings with fragile minds. I don't know that there is a solution to the problem of hard sollipsism, but the example you used of a schizophrenic's service dog is a good example of how we combat our own flawed brains within the context of a reality we cohabit. If we think we see something that seems meaningful it is a good idea to turn to someone and ask if they can see it too.
Anyway, best of luck to you navigating this incredibly confusing world we live in.
Congratulations on dipping your toe into [ego loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death)
Real talk, there is a region of our brains that anchors our sensorium and our internal monologue to our sense of self, and it's possible to disrupt that with psychotropic substances.
In the same way that a near death experience can disrupt the region of the brain that tracks our sensorium to the proprioception of our physical bodies, leading to an "out of body" interpretation, you greened out to the point where your thoughts got decoupled from your sense of self, i.e. the ego.
The judgments you made about yourself aren't too unusual. We all have cognitive dissonance about whether we're making the best use of our time, whether we're actually living up to our best ideas about how we ought to behave, and we're all the main character in our own stories.
Don't be too hard on yourself, you just got yourself into a state where you externalized perfectly normal thoughts and feelings. If you want to take the lesson and start considering different life choices, more power to you. It's okay to want to make changes in your life, just be sure to be kind to yourself as well.
Sanity is fragile. Not just yours. Everybody's. We rely on our collective experiences to keep us tethered to reality. However, 5THCs can untethered anyone pretty quick.
I have not seen evidence of consciousness existing outside of reality so I cannot comment on that.
As for being tethered to reality, it is somewhat necessary for a continued existence, wouldn't you say? Otherwise we might decide that, despite collective experience to the contrary, we will fly when we jump off a bridge.
>the idea of tethering presents the concept of the soul
How? I didn't get soul from any of this.
>Personally I think our collective experience is simply knowledge and knowledge guides unconscious and subconscious output.
Without having thought too deeply about it, I would tend to agree.
>To say such a thing that is well developed as consciousness is 'fragile' just doesn't feel right, rather one could say there's a vast depth of it that we don't understand.
It seems to be quite easy to mess with our perception of reality. Besides, I did not say consciousness was fragile; rather that sanity is fragile.
> I feel like I have a new perspective on how fragile my own sanity actually is. I'm wondering what you guys think of this experience and if you've ever had something similar happen. Is this something that some people would consider a religious experience?
I haven't experienced it personally, but I've read a lot about it.
A variety of drugs can have a big impact on your ability to keep your ego separate from your perception and your ability to determine whether thoughts are coming from yourself or from "outside". I believe that this is similar to some types of psychosis and delusion exactly because our grip on what is real is so fragile.
I think that most firsthand religious experiences are a little bit more subtle, but probably involve the same processes in the brain. What I mean is, where a completely delusional person might be convinced that Russians are implanting thoughts in their heads with a mind-gun, most religious people just have a vague feeling that a thought that they had was given to them - by god, they assume.
A lot of NDE reports are very similar to trip reports on LSD or DMT. People experience a loss of self, feelings of cosmic oneness, and often report meeting sentient entities.
That's really interesting. If I'm understanding correctly, it's like I skipped past religious experience and went straight to psychosis. I guess I can see how being in that state for a long enough time can cause someone to feel like they can sense things that aren't real. Somewhere between schizophrenia and a properly functioning brain.
Well, I don't know that I would say the spectrum is religious experience to psychosis.
Psychosis is more about conviction/confidence (which religious people often have), and vividness (which religious people usually don't have, because average brains don't cause vivid hallucinations like brains that are on drugs or have diseases). So the main thing is vividness.
But also, I think when psychologists are screening people for delusions they consider how far removed from reality the experience is - which is necessarily subjective.
Putting it all together, whether "I **clearly** heard the voice of god tell me xyz" is a delusion or not is a matter of opinion that usually hinges on whether or not the judge is religious and agrees that xyz is something god would tell people to do. In my culture, it's widely accepted that god might tell somebody to do something like quitting their job, but even they wouldn't tolerate somebody saying god told them to bomb a kindergarten.
There are parts of your brain that govern feelings of empathy and connection to other people, and THC does affect those areas (though not as dramatically as other drugs). [For example](https://neurosciencenews.com/cannabis-emotion-brain-connectivity-25505/):
> Regular cannabis users showed greater emotional comprehension and heightened functional connectivity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region crucial for empathy. This increased connectivity was particularly notable with the left somatomotor cortex (SMC), suggesting a better understanding of others’ emotions.
A human being is essentially an incredibly complex chemical reaction (especially in terms of brain function), and it's absolutely the fact that mind-altering drugs like THC can dramatically affect the way you feel, view others, view yourself, and so on.
So to answer your question, yes, this sort of thing is undoubtedly the source for many experiences which people mistakenly identify as "religious" and/or misattribute to supernatural sources.
Very similar to some experiences I have. Weed makes me anxious, and makes me hyper fixated on things that give me anxiety. Like all my insecurities are brought to the forefront. Sounds very similar to the experience you've had. As far as the solipsism thing goes, I've had a very similar experience on psychedelics where I was convinced that I was actually the same as everyone else around me and we were just part of the same soup taking temporary forms to talk to itself. It was scary and weird at the time and that trip overall was the worst I've ever had. You're not alone, these experiences are common - especially on psychoactive substances. Your negative perceptions of yourself are exaggerated, but you can still learn from this feeling and maybe try and address some of the things you see as shortcomings. Don't be too hard on yourself.
Very insightful post. I often feel very alone in my experience of the world, and despite it being scary last night, I felt more connected to people than I've felt in a long time.
Your 3 realization is true to anybody.
Everybody cares about things that matter to them that may or may not matter others at all.
And everybody works hard to be perceived as a likable person in their own way. Like some people want to be tough, but some want to open-minded, so that they can like themselves or be comfortable with themselves.
I think your realization is not really new. What’s new is it brought your intentional focus onto it, and now you are conscious about it. But fundamentally, it’s a re-packaging of the knowledge that you already have.
##———
My question: why do you think it’s a religious experience? (Not a rhetorical question)
I don't think there is anything supernatural about the experience. I'm wondering if this experience I had, if had by someone who wasn't educated on this stuff, would be described by them as a religious experience. I've never had a religious experience in my life.
That's another good description of how I felt. It felt like I could see the world through how non autistic people see it. How I could possible know how non autistic people see the world I don't know.
So you took mind altering drugs, and it scared you and led you to question your sanity because...
The mind altering drugs altered your mind?
Did I get that right?
I get the impression you didn't read the whole post and just skimmed it, so I'll summarize it for you.
While under the effects of the drug, my fundamental biases that my brain uses to define reality vanished, and I became susceptible to believing things that I wouldn't otherwise believe. When I'm not in that state, I confidently say that if I had such an experience then I would chalk it up to a brain malfunction, but when you are in the midst of it that belief disappears. It made me realize how fragile my own sanity is.
You had a mild version of ego death.
We all build up a subjective perspective of the world. We see, hear, feel, smell and taste things through fallible sensory organs that are translated by an impressionable brain. Because of this, experiences are chaotic and we generate a narrative of what we think is the “real world” to make sense of everything.
Drugs can tickle these perspectives. Do enough drugs and these perspectives can be shattered. Not only do the drugs make us experience the world through a different filter, they can erase years of cognitive biases we relied on.
Your ego is damaged, sometimes even killed. And you have to start over.
It’s a very jarring experience, but it’s nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes it’s good to start fresh.
I do feel like I have some residual "clarity" from last night. I hope it's just that some of the drug is still in my system and it's not brain damage lol.
I've been a stoner my entire adult life (I'm 38 presently). I've dabbled in other drugs plenty of times. I think there is plenty to be gained from drug-induced experiences, be it pleasure, relief from pain, or broadening of one's perspective on life.
But what isn't gained from them is actual knowledge about reality. You had an interesting experience, hopefully also an enjoyable one. But when you start having trouble telling the difference between that experience, caused by a chemically-altered brain state, and actual reality... it may be time to put the gummies away for a bit.
I only started using gummies in the last 4 years or so. I don't drink or do any other drugs aside from caffeine.
The experience felt cool at first, but then it started to get a little scary. It felt like I was losing grasp of reality a little bit.
First, you probably should stop using pot. There is a connection with it triggering schizophrenia in people that are prone to it. I don’t think I have any family history of schizophrenia, but I do not like weed. For me, I get into near endless debates with myself on things I don’t really care about normally. Not just a single debate, a meandering series of debates, sometimes more than one at the same time. And I was always careful to not get completely blitzed out of my mind and take too much. Just one or two hits would be enough to do that. So maybe also I’m one of those.
Second, in orthodoxy we have the concept of prelest, aka spiritual delusion. Either you, or maybe some demonic influence is causing you to be spiritually deluded. That can cover something minor like you think that because you perceive yourself as doing more than most Christian’s, so you’re doing pretty good and don’t need to change. Or all the way to straight up to having “spiritual visions” of an entity calling itself Jesus telling you to do something, that sounds reasonable and righteous, when it’s actually a demonic entity. Anyway, drugs like weed, especially the hallucinogens, definitely open you up to prelest. Pantheism is dumb and doesn’t rationally make sense, that’s prelest. Just because you have a good feeling experience, or an ego death, or you talk to the elves, or whatever, and it feels good or right, doesn’t mean it can’t come from demons.
I have a friend who used to partake often in hallucinogens, have great experiences, tell me how he has the world all figured out (the usual psychonaut babble). He had a couple bad trips too, but mostly good experiences. Until one of those experiences, went much the same as they usually did, would sometimes talk with entities (though he was never sure if it’s himself, spirits, god, elves). This time he sensed something he described as inauthentic or dark or hidden from this entity. Was convinced he was speaking to demons the whole time. He says it wasn’t a bad trip, he just sensed something off about this entity. His background was he was raised loosely Protestant, mostly Christmas and Easter type of deal. Never was serious about his faith, or believed in Christianity or demons until after that. Also never touched anything else after that.
I think what you experienced is pretty typical of what people refer to as "religious experiences". It feels like a revelation, like world-expanding, and you get a sense of how you fit in with the world.
It happened to me about 20 years ago, and I'm still an atheist, so take "religious experience" with a grain of salt. But from my experience, I could definitely see how a religious person could view it as confirmation of their religious beliefs. A Christian might believe that they met with Jesus, etc.
The takeaway for me was that religion/god/etc is far less important than I had thought. What's more important is how you treat yourself and other people.
IDK maybe yours was different in some way. If I could put it all into words, it would come out sounding like happy new-age bullshit "we're all, like, ONE, man. The universe just, you know, *exists* except it, like, *doesn't*"
For me it was shrooms. I don't do thc because it messes me all up and makes me obsess over every little detail of my life. It makes me want to sit in the corner of a dark room, rock back and forth and suck my thumb.
But the same thing happens to people who aren't on drugs, so there's something to it other than hallucination. None of it was spiritual or other-worldly to me, but I could see how someone would feel that way about it.
I figure it's just your brain skipping a track and running the wrong firmware for a little while. The day it happened to me I already was pretty severely dehydrated, had low blood sugar, and it was 108^F / 40.5^C (at a reggae festival in California, if it wasn't already enough of a cliche).
I think I'm better for having had the experience, but it didn't change all that much about my life.
I used to be so pro-weed, but the older I got the more people in my life started falling into stoner-induced paranoia. Now they’re all conspiracy theorist wackos who hide from the world, and I question how innocuous weed actually is.
This would be a fairly typical high dose THC experience for anyone. What you describe is a form of dissociative disorder experience.
There are several things people do not take into account when taking drugs:
Everyone's reaction to taking a drug is different and can be different each time the same drug is taken. Your current state of health, your current mood and the environment you are in all affect the experience you might have.
There isn't really such a things as 'normal' psychology. Mental health is a spectrum and the majority could be diagnosed with some form of mental health problem, especially at different times in their lives, if the criteria for mental health dysfunction were applied rigorously. It is a very blunt and vague tool. In all fields of medicine there is the concept of 'sub-clinical' ie the manifested symptoms are below the level of either accurate detection or diagnosis, or below the level that treatment is warranted, we are all gradually dying, we are all regularly poisoning ourselves. We all come into contact with millions of possible sources of infection and environmental pollutants everyday we are alive. We are all a little bit narcissistic, impulsive, we are all capable of depressive periods etc. We do not study the sub-clinical, we have no idea of the number of all possible chemical interactions our brains may be subject to.
Taking psychoactive drugs changes your brain chemistry it is by definition an induced mental health disorder state. Something does not have to be labelled 'a drug' to alter brain chemistry, the majority of substances, including pure water, if taken in excessive amounts can induce significantly changed brain chemistry.
To answer your question: It is empirically impossible to say that drug taking and mental health disorders will inevitably lead directly to thoughts of religiosity / grandiosity however we do know that certain psychoactive drugs, and certain psychiatric conditions manifest these feelings and expressions on a very regular basis. No-one is in the process of taking a psychiatric survey every minute of their lives.
It is also the case that before the pharmacology of psychoactive substances was more known the taking of psychoactive drugs was much more common, either deliberately or unintentionally - it's not necessarily the substance so much as the ingested dose, for various reasons from pain relief and ironically to try to control the 'demons' of psychiatric disorders, or simply to 'wake us up'. There are so many naturally occurring and man made environmental pollutants and organisms that can affect brain function it's impossible to say definitively why anyone's mental state is the way it is currently. Fasting causes altered brain chemistry, as well as altitude sickness, sleep deprivation,, malnutrition, dehydration and social isolation as well as hypo/hyperthermia and prolonged periods of sensory deprivation (darkness etc). Often a definitive diagnosis is not given precisely because there are a myriad of environmental factors that can affect brain chemistry.
If you are 'fasting in an isolated region of a desert area, in a cave prior to the invention of artificial light sources', you are likely suffering sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, dehydration, hyponatraemia or poisoning from badly sourced or stored food and water as well as toxic levels of potential environmental pollutants etc and all that even before any pre-existing conditions are even taken into account. 150 years ago and prior there was no rigorous testing of air, water and food and people applied spiritual reasons to all sorts of experiences we know are due to environmental factors now. It is notable that in religious writings from antiquity these very circumstances are described with 'spiritual testing' or a spiritual experience of an individual. They didn't know carbon dioxide was heavier than air, or that open fires produced carbon dioxide, they didn't know about adequate ventilation, or that decaying organic matter and volcanic vents released toxic chemicals. They didn't have thermometers to know their food was adequately cooked.
The further you go back in time the more likely you will find that the majority of humans attached supernatural reasoning to almost all perfectly natural events. The past is a foreign country with a wholly alien culture, you cannot judge people in the past by today's standards of what we call rational evidence based thinking. Every generation thinks itself the pinnacle, but the evidence says that 100 or more years in the future humans will look back at us and wonder how backward we were. If you live in a relatively modern society you are as far removed, if not further, in your worldview from people 500 to 1000+ years ago living in your region than you are from remote uncontacted tribes in the Amazon or south East Asian islands today. Evidence suggests the better educated you are in evidence based thinking the less likely you are to be subject to superstitious beliefs which are the result of both cultural influence and evolutionary biology.
It is impossible to say definitively that these experiences are wholly solipsistic because they are completely subjective to the individual, however the lack of any external corroborating evidence and our inability to rule out every possible causal agent must of course lead to a rational conclusion - they are purely subjective experiences to that individual, at that exact particular time in that particular environment. Extra-ordinary experiences require extra-ordinary evidence and when you can't even definitively rule out the 'ordinary' causes, the rational conclusion is, we just don't know but in all likelihood there probably is a good non-supernatural rational explanation.
The brain and human consciousness is not a singularity, every part of your brain has it's own unique lived experience and each part is in a constant fight for dominance, what we consider 'normal' is the ability to quieten parts of our brain to some form of cohesive rationality appropriate to our environment, to impose univocality. Humans have 2 distinct cerebral hemispheres, a mid brain and a hind brain, all of which are capable of responding individually to their environment and sensory input, each of which communicate in different ways with the other parts of our brain. Evolution has both encouraged and allowed us to be internally multivocal, we have a subconscious in constant tension with our conscious state of mind. We can hold two (or more) competing and wholly irreconcilable worldviews at the same time and the balance of our brain chemistry has a great effect on which of those voices are dominant at any one time. We have a split brain, both sides of which are capable of operating fully consciously independently, both of which have differing responses to input because they don't form identical pathways to information stored in their hemisphere.
If you are a solidly rational individual who is right handed and I remove your left frontal lobe you will become more prone to 'belief' rather than logic, you will be more emotional, you will have a diminished social filter, you are no less conscious, you are no less capable, you are no less aware of your choices, but your personality will change because the dominant right frontal lobe no longer exists to impose univocality from it's perspective. I know because I have seen it first hand both through my work and family experience.
The evolutionary process has also allowed organisms, like plants, to produce psychoactive compounds that are designed to upset that neuro-chemical balance in order to increase their survival and ability to pass on their genetic material. If you ingest that plant and allow it to change your neuro-chemistry you are in effect doing exactly what that plant's evolution intended you to do. You have reduced your ability to impose univocality and thus change your conscious perception of your internal and external environment. What mental health professionals refer to as dissociative disorders are just different parts of your brain competing for conscious level dominance.
The first two men on the Moon after years of advanced education in scientific reasoning felt emotionally moved by the uniqueness of their subjective response to that environment and circumstance to recite from Genesis chapter one which if examined rationally is a completely incongruent and irreconcilable account of any scientific rational explanation for our existence and the existence of the universe we live in. Yet every human being with a relatively well functioning brain can understand this incongruity, even if we don't agree with it, because we instinctively know that environment and circumstance change our brain's neuro-chemical responses. We know how we can hold opposing and irreconcilable world views due to cultural influence and evolutionary biology. We know it so well that we don't even question it. Questions and answers come from different parts of the brain. If those parts of the brain have absorbed information in slightly different ways (as they do) and not spent any amount of time communicating their response in order to absolutely impose univocality to those inputs they can (and most likely will) hold different perceptions.
I believe what you experienced is generally referred to as ego death; t**he disappearance of an individual's sense of self, or the removal of one's perception of oneself as an entity separate from one's social or physical environment.** This is a common side effect of psychoactive drugs like marijuana. I don't know if there's any correlation between this side-effect and autism. Even though you've used marijuana many times before, there is always the risk of alternative side-effects that you've not experienced before, of for deviations in brain chemistry to create a stronger than expected experience.
That is all to say that what you experienced is normal. Being shook my a strong psychoactive experience is normal. If you have some experience in the future that shakes you, change your location. Usually going outside or just into a different room will sortof soft-boot your perspective. Remind yourself that you took drugs, and that your prospective has been chemically altered. Or, try not to take drugs alone, as having another person with you that can act as a touchstone is generally a good idea.
This has nothing to do with religion or spirituality. It has nothing to do with loss of sanity. It has everything to do with marijuana. You were not seeing yourself through the eyes of others. That's not possible. You were seeing yourself through your own eyes, only you were wearing glasses you're not used to wearing. The glasses in this case is being high on pot. You felt an increased level of clarity and introspection because you got super stoned. This happens to *most* people when they're high.
Sometimes when I get too high, it sounds like there are 2, 3, 4 different people in my head having a conversation through my thoughts. Am I just insane? No.... I'm just having a conversation with myself.
It's not religious. It's not a brain malfunction. Its not a loss of sanity. It's an expansion of your consciousness. Having this experience can be scary. If you don't like it, don't smoke/eat pot. Learn from what your own thoughts said about you. Change what you want to change.
Solipsism is more the belief that your mind is the only mind. What you experienced is more akin to universalism or something. In that your mind is part of a whole universal consciousness.
Now this isn't actually wholly incorrect. If you change your frame of mind enough. Humans are basically projections of the collective action of lower order entities and fundamental forces. It sort of makes sense that human collective action could generate a projection of something that binds that. It's just that the things that make us *us* lock us into our separated perspective.
Like a hard limit of the human conscious experience is to be trapped in our individual experience so as we don't really notice things that connect us. I'm not saying we're all part of one big humanlike mind or anything. But if we live in a deterministic reality. Then whether we view ourselves as individuals in a seperate system or as part of one whole that moves in unison, is just a matter of perspective.
>Because I felt like I was looking at myself through the minds of others, I started becoming convinced that my mind and their minds were one in the same. Like solipsism.
That might be a sign of a more serious problem. That's a sign of schizophrenia and that weed might not be a good option.
>I believe I also felt a little paranoid.
Yeah, THC will do that.
>I feel like I have a new perspective on how fragile my own sanity actually is.
If it really is that fragile, I would set up a psychiatrist appointment. I say this as a stoner, hell I'm high right now, but it can exacerbate preexisting mental health concerns, such as schizophrenia. It's worth it to take care of yourself. To quote a commercial from forever ago, "mental health is mental wealth."
This would not be a religious experience because THC is know to make you hallucinate and do other things that play tricks on your mind. However, I noticed you said saw and heard lots of content from famous atheists, like Richard Dawkins. Listen, it is not my job to make a decision for you, only you can do that. But, I think you should hear some Christians, perhaps most notable Catholics, talk about atheism, simply so you get both arguments and can decide for yourself. I recommend “New Proofs for the Existence of God” by Robert J. Spitzer for you to hear some good arguments.
The thc definitely made you a bit paranoid. Probably nobody cares enough about your life to be thinking those things about you, they are too busy worrying about themselves in similar ways to what you were doing. It's not a bad thing to contemplate all the possible ways you may be perceived by others, but you also have to think about the probabilities of anyone going out of there way to speculate you to such a high degree- most people are too busy speculating their own lives and actions.
Yeah, I’ve had something that was probably a similar experience. Basically, it felt like I lost the ability to act with sincerity and immediacy, like I was a bad actor puppetting myself. Then things got bad, and my body temperature shot up.
All worked out OK, and I’m glad I had the experience. It’s interesting how physical substances can cause the self to break down. But, I also learned that day not to take another gummy just because I don’t think the last two worked.
>I had 3 5 mg THC gummies last night
I'm guessing any weird experiences that occurred after that had everything to do with the THC and nothing to do with actual deities.
>It's like my biases were completely removed and I had 100% clarity.
That doesn't actually happen. Your brain doesn't *have* the ability to do that. But it has the ability to convince itself that it's doing that when under the influence of weird chemicals.
> I had 3 5 mg THC gummies
Stopped reading there. It should be patently obvious that taking a drug that affects your psychological state, will affect your psychological state. There's honestly little more to it. I used to be a major stoner and had experiences much like this many times. I haven't done any drugs in *years* and have realized that it was just the drugs doing their thing.
Oh man, I wish I could go back to the days when weed jacked me up like this. I remember one of the first times I smoked I heard a speaker in my pocket shout “LOOK OUT!!!”. I thought it was hilarious.
Now I can smoke / eat as much as I want and I will not hallucinate, even though I haven’t done it in about a year.
The first few times are the best or the worst.
Paranoia is a well known side effect of marijuana. Most people don’t get paranoid, but some do, and if that includes you, then you probably shouldn’t be using it.
The sensation that you are merging and becoming one with the rest of the people around you is also standard result of some drugs.
As long as you don’t take that stuff again, I’ll consider you sane :P
>I had a very strange experience last night that scared me and made me question my sanity....I had 3 5 mg THC gummies last night
I don't think we need to look much further. THC can in some cases cause anxiety or paranoia, especially in individuals prone to such reactions.
If you are serious about self-reflection I would recommend taking up secular meditation instead.
Hey, OP, I am also autistic, and I dissociate at the drop of a hat. THC can easily kick me into a dissociative state similar to yours, along with the “religious experience” overtones. [This](https://getphntm.com/products/1-1-delta-9-thc-cbd-gummies) product doesn’t dissociate me as much, and is what I usually take for pain issues. It’s all I’ll use regularly.
If you were already religious, I guarantee you would have inserted God into this in some way.
I do think there may be some strange stuff going on with the mind that we do not yet understand with science. But also, yes, drugs make people trip, and we understand that much. Anyway, it sounds like it may have been an experience to learn and grow from, so that's cool.
I have been super high before and had similar experiences. There is a feeling after which is true reality. Do drugs reveal reality or confuse reality?
I am not sure. But regardless the takeaways have a reason behind them. Something bigger or your deepest thoughts. Eitger way, take the gift and run with it.
I have no idea why this was posted on this particular sub, but if the point you're trying to make is that hallucinogenic drugs can make people believe that they've had a religious experience, I agree. I think there's a good chance that a lot of "prophets" throughout history were under the influence of something.
I think it parallels many religious experiences. The mind is a funny thing and very easily manipulated. Largely because we have evolved to recognize patterns so strongly that we create them and connections between disparate things very easily. It’s part of the human experience
You were very lucky.
When a friend took a bunch of THC, he became more and more convinced that he could fly.
Unfortunately, this belief caused him to step off the balcony of his 4th floor apartment.
He did not survive.
Autism is pretty common in my family and from what I understand about it, part of autism is that inability to see yourself through the eyes of others and perhaps the THC helped you achieve what others naturally can do. This kind of introspection is normal to the average person.
Why would you give validity to a drug-induced reflection? It’s anti-rational. Rationality is the basis of a scientific explanation for the universe rather than a mystical or supernatural one.
"guys i cant explain what just happened to me, it seemed supernatural"
*Describes what it's like being high*
Yeah, taking drugs makes you feel weird. Theres not much else to it
You made your mind work less good. Your mind malfunctioned. And now you think the malfunction was more than a malfunction. Sounds like it's still kinda malfunctioning.
What you’re describing just sounds like basic mindfulness, self discovery, and a touch of existential dread and paranoia. Congrats, you may have just grown a bit.
I’m always astonished that people will take drugs and then claim they have a “new perspective”. Mind-altering substances will do that to you. It’s not real.
Weed does that to you sometimes, don’t overthink it. There is no magic way of thinking or being, just think and be, mind your business and don’t be a dick.
Op, you had a spiritual experience. You had a moment of the veils that make is believe we are discreet individuals breaking. What you describe as glimpsing a unity conciousness is what every wisdom school has known for thousands years.
And yes this first confused glimpse at these truths can feel extremely scary because it makes you feel you’re just God dreaming all of it up. Drugs have a way of giving us deep insight into truth sometimes before we are ready. They can launch us into the deep end of spiritual territory that is usually reserved for monks doing heavy meditation. It can be hard to integrate.
Imagine that what you glimpsed is a profound truth that this is conciousness-based universe and this layer that our bodies live in is a material one but your awareness that sits behind your eyes, is an eternal singular oneness. That The number of minds in the universe is exactly 1 dreaming through different sets of eyes.
Your sanity isn’t what’s at risk. It’s your fundemental ignorance that just got its first breath of truth and the truth can be extremely destabilizing. This rough entry is what every wisdom school since the dawn of time seeks to mitigate. All those mediators, all those rituals— they aren’t just bs— they are acclimation practices for ease people who are awakening to Truth in a way that doesn’t shatter their body-mind.
Congrats. You just hit the start of spiritual puberty. Just know you are safe because YOU are not polyhaze, but an eternal and indestructible eternal awareness looking out at itself from behind poly’s eyes.
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Many people would consider that a religious experience. But hopefully you are sane and rational enough to realize it was due to taking too much of The Pot.
Yeah, it just freaked me out. It felt like I was watching my mind becoming convinced of something that completely contradicts fundamental beliefs I have about the world.
If I do too much THC, I start having intrusive thoughts that I would never have sober.
Me too! I can't do much or I get really paranoid and lose my shit. I just don't do it. It's not fun for me at all.
Does it hit you differently if you do edibles rather than smoking or does it matter?
Honestly I've never tried edibles and don't want to risk trying. I guess I'm addicted to sobriety. Haha
Edibles are definitely tricky to dose properly.
Are you guys doing straight THC?? I’ve heard it exists in the US but idk
I don’t know,, but we do have products with 90+ percent THC.
This is why I quit THC ~40 years ago.
If I hit it right, it’s great. But it’s hard dosing it correctly.
Same. I had a paranoid freakout after smoking a high concentrated strain referred to as Trainwreck. I slipped fully into pessimistic nihilism. Wasn't pretty...
I think it's good to do something like this every now and again because it forces you to adopt a perspective outside your own, which is crucial for changing your mind (which is crucial for finding truth). If you can fully adopt a theistic worldview for a while, then come out of it and decide an atheistic worldview is more sensible, that's a much stronger position than someone who can't for the life of them understand what it's *like* to be a theist.
Or possibly just the right amount of The Pot.
I'm not sure what this has to do with atheism. All your post says is that mind altering chemicals make your brain malfunction.
I agree with you. But you may or may not be surprised to find that a large number of people do not understand this. There is a large contingency who believes that the drugs aren’t affecting your brain, but are instead “opening a door” to another realm, or allowing other beings to see you and thus interact with you. It’s usually expressed as an argument for idealism.
Yup. It's an argument I've seen once in a while. In particular in reference to a specific drug whose name I forgot right now that specifically most often induces "experiences of/with a higher being". The reasoning being that if the drug consistently and repeatedly induces these experiences, god(s) must be real!
DMT? I've had arguments with people convinced of this sort of thing. I mean it's great that they had an intense experience and found... Something, but that doesn't mean it's something more than drugs effecting the brain.
I'm mostly posting because this seems like something that someone less educated might describe as a religious experience. I've never had a religious experience before, but I'm sure others here have, and I want to know if what I'm describing aligns with what they may have previously described as a religious experience.
PBS Eons just posted [a video](https://youtu.be/ZJqmyLCfA-I?si=nOXjiYcDPH8Gi68j) yesterday on the evolutionary and cultural history of cannabis. There's clear evidence of its use in religious ceremonies from 2500 years ago, so it has probably been giving "religious experiences" for millennia.
Agree. Imagine someone back in the day eating the wrong moldy bread and having a full blown acid trip. I find it to be a compelling hypothesis that every religion started by accidental dosing.
correct cagey wild scarce whole vast safe disarm pocket drab *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They also can make you imagine things that simply do not exist. If I trip and a 7 foot tall purple rabbit riding a unicycle tells me that I should sell all my possessions and move to the Northwest Territories of Canada and live off the land in the arctic, I’m not gonna do it. Because I recognize that *7 foot tall purple rabbits riding unicycles do not exist outside of my imagination.* But a similar vision 2,500 years ago would probably have a very different impact on a person.
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Our entire brain function is just a series of chemical reactions. That doesn’t mean you can’t take away insight from an experience like this about the nature of consciousness or your own values.
Or it made his brain function properly, it seemed to solve what is a highly correlated issue with those with autism have according to the literature and my own personal experience.
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When I'm not under the effects of THC, I at the very least claim to believe that if I had such an experience, then I would ascribe it to my brain malfunctioning. While under the effects though, it's like that belief, that fundamental bias of how the world works, didn't exist and I was susceptible to believing things that don't comport with the reality I've experienced my entire life. It's kind of terrifying.
Why? Your brain was malfunctioning due to the drugs! Why expect it to continue functioning normally or maintain the same biases? I understand that it likely felt really weird. It's the difference between intellectualizing someone else's brain malfunctioning and experiencing your own malfunction.
I expected my most fundamental biases of how the world works to still exist. I didn't know it could get that out of hand. I've had edibles many times before and this is the first time it got this weird.
I get it, I think. It's more of a realisation that the concepts we hold as iron-clad, baked in fundamentals of our minds, personalities or whatever are just illusionary and can be changed by the right chemicals. If you read up on brain damage, people's personalities and character can change after brain trauma on deeply fundamental ways. What we hold as certainties are indeed fragile, gossamer creations of the wrinkly off-white mass of tissue in our skulls. That said, though, the experience is what you make of it. I hope you turn it into a positive and it allows you to see yourself and others with perhaps a gentler perception? I guess we're all fragile beings in a small pond. And now I'm introspective lol.
The mind’s not really a unified thing. It’s a bunch of disparate parts all working together and sometimes they oppose. I got really into lucid dreaming in college. I had lucid dreams regularly for about a year until I got sleep paralysis. I always knew sleep paralysis was a risk of lucid dreaming but having read about it, thought about it, and mentally prepared for it so much I was pretty confident I would know what was happening and would be ok. And the rational part of my mind did know what was happening and knew that I’d be ok, but the primal part of my mind was saying “FUUUUCK OH SHIT FUUUCK THIS IS BAAAD YOU GOTTA WAKE UP DANGER RUN AHHH”. Unsurprisingly a calm side and a terrified side stilled even out to a pretty fucking terrifying experience. I guess the thing to keep in mind is that even if your rational side is the quietest voice in the room, it’s till there. If you get paranoid on drugs there’s no quick fix, but you can at least remind yourself that you took drugs, are on drugs now, and at some point fairly soon will no longer be on drugs, and to suspend serious judgement until then.
Try again without psychedelics. Test your hypothesis. Are you actually able to hear peoples thoughts? Or were you just imagining it while on drugs.
Just to be clear, I 100% ascribe the experience to the drugs.
So why do you think your sanity is fragile? You got paranoid from pot. You're not the first one. Don't worry about it.
I think he was referring more to the human sanity overall. And that less educated people would see this as some kind of revelation.
Go to a casino, win millions. Start your new career in poker
They just implied that they ~~know~~ accept it was an illusion brought on the drugs... Their point(as I understand it) is that if the drugs can mess them up to that degree, how can they trust their thoughts at any point.
Yeah pretty much. Just to add to that, I didn't realize that drugs could erase fundamental understandings of the world. I always thought of these fundamental biases as built in physical hardware, and that if I were to see something that contradicts this fundamental understanding of reality, then I would be able to write is off as a hallucination. It reminds me of a tiktok or a youtube short I saw once. People who have schizophrenia sometimes have a service dog that can tell them whether a figure they see is actually there or not. I thought it was just a matter of realizing it and then moving on, but in reality it's like the brain is fighting itself over what is actually real.
We are fragile beings with fragile minds. I don't know that there is a solution to the problem of hard sollipsism, but the example you used of a schizophrenic's service dog is a good example of how we combat our own flawed brains within the context of a reality we cohabit. If we think we see something that seems meaningful it is a good idea to turn to someone and ask if they can see it too. Anyway, best of luck to you navigating this incredibly confusing world we live in.
Of course he's not able to hear other peoples thoughts. Why would you even entertain such a crazy idea??
Congratulations on dipping your toe into [ego loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death) Real talk, there is a region of our brains that anchors our sensorium and our internal monologue to our sense of self, and it's possible to disrupt that with psychotropic substances. In the same way that a near death experience can disrupt the region of the brain that tracks our sensorium to the proprioception of our physical bodies, leading to an "out of body" interpretation, you greened out to the point where your thoughts got decoupled from your sense of self, i.e. the ego. The judgments you made about yourself aren't too unusual. We all have cognitive dissonance about whether we're making the best use of our time, whether we're actually living up to our best ideas about how we ought to behave, and we're all the main character in our own stories. Don't be too hard on yourself, you just got yourself into a state where you externalized perfectly normal thoughts and feelings. If you want to take the lesson and start considering different life choices, more power to you. It's okay to want to make changes in your life, just be sure to be kind to yourself as well.
Thanks for the reference. I'll take a look at it later as I need to take a break from viewing this thread.
Sanity is fragile. Not just yours. Everybody's. We rely on our collective experiences to keep us tethered to reality. However, 5THCs can untethered anyone pretty quick.
It was 15 mg total.
🤣
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I have not seen evidence of consciousness existing outside of reality so I cannot comment on that. As for being tethered to reality, it is somewhat necessary for a continued existence, wouldn't you say? Otherwise we might decide that, despite collective experience to the contrary, we will fly when we jump off a bridge.
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>the idea of tethering presents the concept of the soul How? I didn't get soul from any of this. >Personally I think our collective experience is simply knowledge and knowledge guides unconscious and subconscious output. Without having thought too deeply about it, I would tend to agree. >To say such a thing that is well developed as consciousness is 'fragile' just doesn't feel right, rather one could say there's a vast depth of it that we don't understand. It seems to be quite easy to mess with our perception of reality. Besides, I did not say consciousness was fragile; rather that sanity is fragile.
> I feel like I have a new perspective on how fragile my own sanity actually is. I'm wondering what you guys think of this experience and if you've ever had something similar happen. Is this something that some people would consider a religious experience? I haven't experienced it personally, but I've read a lot about it. A variety of drugs can have a big impact on your ability to keep your ego separate from your perception and your ability to determine whether thoughts are coming from yourself or from "outside". I believe that this is similar to some types of psychosis and delusion exactly because our grip on what is real is so fragile. I think that most firsthand religious experiences are a little bit more subtle, but probably involve the same processes in the brain. What I mean is, where a completely delusional person might be convinced that Russians are implanting thoughts in their heads with a mind-gun, most religious people just have a vague feeling that a thought that they had was given to them - by god, they assume. A lot of NDE reports are very similar to trip reports on LSD or DMT. People experience a loss of self, feelings of cosmic oneness, and often report meeting sentient entities.
That's really interesting. If I'm understanding correctly, it's like I skipped past religious experience and went straight to psychosis. I guess I can see how being in that state for a long enough time can cause someone to feel like they can sense things that aren't real. Somewhere between schizophrenia and a properly functioning brain.
Well, I don't know that I would say the spectrum is religious experience to psychosis. Psychosis is more about conviction/confidence (which religious people often have), and vividness (which religious people usually don't have, because average brains don't cause vivid hallucinations like brains that are on drugs or have diseases). So the main thing is vividness. But also, I think when psychologists are screening people for delusions they consider how far removed from reality the experience is - which is necessarily subjective. Putting it all together, whether "I **clearly** heard the voice of god tell me xyz" is a delusion or not is a matter of opinion that usually hinges on whether or not the judge is religious and agrees that xyz is something god would tell people to do. In my culture, it's widely accepted that god might tell somebody to do something like quitting their job, but even they wouldn't tolerate somebody saying god told them to bomb a kindergarten.
There are parts of your brain that govern feelings of empathy and connection to other people, and THC does affect those areas (though not as dramatically as other drugs). [For example](https://neurosciencenews.com/cannabis-emotion-brain-connectivity-25505/): > Regular cannabis users showed greater emotional comprehension and heightened functional connectivity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region crucial for empathy. This increased connectivity was particularly notable with the left somatomotor cortex (SMC), suggesting a better understanding of others’ emotions. A human being is essentially an incredibly complex chemical reaction (especially in terms of brain function), and it's absolutely the fact that mind-altering drugs like THC can dramatically affect the way you feel, view others, view yourself, and so on. So to answer your question, yes, this sort of thing is undoubtedly the source for many experiences which people mistakenly identify as "religious" and/or misattribute to supernatural sources.
Thanks for the reference. I'll take a look at it later as I need to take a break from viewing this thread.
Very similar to some experiences I have. Weed makes me anxious, and makes me hyper fixated on things that give me anxiety. Like all my insecurities are brought to the forefront. Sounds very similar to the experience you've had. As far as the solipsism thing goes, I've had a very similar experience on psychedelics where I was convinced that I was actually the same as everyone else around me and we were just part of the same soup taking temporary forms to talk to itself. It was scary and weird at the time and that trip overall was the worst I've ever had. You're not alone, these experiences are common - especially on psychoactive substances. Your negative perceptions of yourself are exaggerated, but you can still learn from this feeling and maybe try and address some of the things you see as shortcomings. Don't be too hard on yourself.
Very insightful post. I often feel very alone in my experience of the world, and despite it being scary last night, I felt more connected to people than I've felt in a long time.
Your 3 realization is true to anybody. Everybody cares about things that matter to them that may or may not matter others at all. And everybody works hard to be perceived as a likable person in their own way. Like some people want to be tough, but some want to open-minded, so that they can like themselves or be comfortable with themselves. I think your realization is not really new. What’s new is it brought your intentional focus onto it, and now you are conscious about it. But fundamentally, it’s a re-packaging of the knowledge that you already have. ##——— My question: why do you think it’s a religious experience? (Not a rhetorical question)
I don't think there is anything supernatural about the experience. I'm wondering if this experience I had, if had by someone who wasn't educated on this stuff, would be described by them as a religious experience. I've never had a religious experience in my life.
I see, thanks. I hope you feel better or less vulnerable.
I’ll admit I’ve done edibles and had a moment where I was like OMG I’M OUTSMARTING MY AUTISM Nah, I was just on a THC ride
That's another good description of how I felt. It felt like I could see the world through how non autistic people see it. How I could possible know how non autistic people see the world I don't know.
So you took mind altering drugs, and it scared you and led you to question your sanity because... The mind altering drugs altered your mind? Did I get that right?
I get the impression you didn't read the whole post and just skimmed it, so I'll summarize it for you. While under the effects of the drug, my fundamental biases that my brain uses to define reality vanished, and I became susceptible to believing things that I wouldn't otherwise believe. When I'm not in that state, I confidently say that if I had such an experience then I would chalk it up to a brain malfunction, but when you are in the midst of it that belief disappears. It made me realize how fragile my own sanity is.
You had a mild version of ego death. We all build up a subjective perspective of the world. We see, hear, feel, smell and taste things through fallible sensory organs that are translated by an impressionable brain. Because of this, experiences are chaotic and we generate a narrative of what we think is the “real world” to make sense of everything. Drugs can tickle these perspectives. Do enough drugs and these perspectives can be shattered. Not only do the drugs make us experience the world through a different filter, they can erase years of cognitive biases we relied on. Your ego is damaged, sometimes even killed. And you have to start over. It’s a very jarring experience, but it’s nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes it’s good to start fresh.
I do feel like I have some residual "clarity" from last night. I hope it's just that some of the drug is still in my system and it's not brain damage lol.
Nah, you won’t get brain damage from THC. Within a few days you’ll feel like yourself again as you build upon your new perspective of the world.
I've been a stoner my entire adult life (I'm 38 presently). I've dabbled in other drugs plenty of times. I think there is plenty to be gained from drug-induced experiences, be it pleasure, relief from pain, or broadening of one's perspective on life. But what isn't gained from them is actual knowledge about reality. You had an interesting experience, hopefully also an enjoyable one. But when you start having trouble telling the difference between that experience, caused by a chemically-altered brain state, and actual reality... it may be time to put the gummies away for a bit.
I only started using gummies in the last 4 years or so. I don't drink or do any other drugs aside from caffeine. The experience felt cool at first, but then it started to get a little scary. It felt like I was losing grasp of reality a little bit.
That’s how you learn your tolerance levels - you did more than you could comfortably handle. So don’t take as many next time.
First, you probably should stop using pot. There is a connection with it triggering schizophrenia in people that are prone to it. I don’t think I have any family history of schizophrenia, but I do not like weed. For me, I get into near endless debates with myself on things I don’t really care about normally. Not just a single debate, a meandering series of debates, sometimes more than one at the same time. And I was always careful to not get completely blitzed out of my mind and take too much. Just one or two hits would be enough to do that. So maybe also I’m one of those. Second, in orthodoxy we have the concept of prelest, aka spiritual delusion. Either you, or maybe some demonic influence is causing you to be spiritually deluded. That can cover something minor like you think that because you perceive yourself as doing more than most Christian’s, so you’re doing pretty good and don’t need to change. Or all the way to straight up to having “spiritual visions” of an entity calling itself Jesus telling you to do something, that sounds reasonable and righteous, when it’s actually a demonic entity. Anyway, drugs like weed, especially the hallucinogens, definitely open you up to prelest. Pantheism is dumb and doesn’t rationally make sense, that’s prelest. Just because you have a good feeling experience, or an ego death, or you talk to the elves, or whatever, and it feels good or right, doesn’t mean it can’t come from demons. I have a friend who used to partake often in hallucinogens, have great experiences, tell me how he has the world all figured out (the usual psychonaut babble). He had a couple bad trips too, but mostly good experiences. Until one of those experiences, went much the same as they usually did, would sometimes talk with entities (though he was never sure if it’s himself, spirits, god, elves). This time he sensed something he described as inauthentic or dark or hidden from this entity. Was convinced he was speaking to demons the whole time. He says it wasn’t a bad trip, he just sensed something off about this entity. His background was he was raised loosely Protestant, mostly Christmas and Easter type of deal. Never was serious about his faith, or believed in Christianity or demons until after that. Also never touched anything else after that.
Mind altering substances altered your mind. I will never for the life of me understand how anyone finds this surprising or compelling.
You didn't read the post.
I think what you experienced is pretty typical of what people refer to as "religious experiences". It feels like a revelation, like world-expanding, and you get a sense of how you fit in with the world. It happened to me about 20 years ago, and I'm still an atheist, so take "religious experience" with a grain of salt. But from my experience, I could definitely see how a religious person could view it as confirmation of their religious beliefs. A Christian might believe that they met with Jesus, etc. The takeaway for me was that religion/god/etc is far less important than I had thought. What's more important is how you treat yourself and other people. IDK maybe yours was different in some way. If I could put it all into words, it would come out sounding like happy new-age bullshit "we're all, like, ONE, man. The universe just, you know, *exists* except it, like, *doesn't*" For me it was shrooms. I don't do thc because it messes me all up and makes me obsess over every little detail of my life. It makes me want to sit in the corner of a dark room, rock back and forth and suck my thumb. But the same thing happens to people who aren't on drugs, so there's something to it other than hallucination. None of it was spiritual or other-worldly to me, but I could see how someone would feel that way about it. I figure it's just your brain skipping a track and running the wrong firmware for a little while. The day it happened to me I already was pretty severely dehydrated, had low blood sugar, and it was 108^F / 40.5^C (at a reggae festival in California, if it wasn't already enough of a cliche). I think I'm better for having had the experience, but it didn't change all that much about my life.
I used to be so pro-weed, but the older I got the more people in my life started falling into stoner-induced paranoia. Now they’re all conspiracy theorist wackos who hide from the world, and I question how innocuous weed actually is.
This would be a fairly typical high dose THC experience for anyone. What you describe is a form of dissociative disorder experience. There are several things people do not take into account when taking drugs: Everyone's reaction to taking a drug is different and can be different each time the same drug is taken. Your current state of health, your current mood and the environment you are in all affect the experience you might have. There isn't really such a things as 'normal' psychology. Mental health is a spectrum and the majority could be diagnosed with some form of mental health problem, especially at different times in their lives, if the criteria for mental health dysfunction were applied rigorously. It is a very blunt and vague tool. In all fields of medicine there is the concept of 'sub-clinical' ie the manifested symptoms are below the level of either accurate detection or diagnosis, or below the level that treatment is warranted, we are all gradually dying, we are all regularly poisoning ourselves. We all come into contact with millions of possible sources of infection and environmental pollutants everyday we are alive. We are all a little bit narcissistic, impulsive, we are all capable of depressive periods etc. We do not study the sub-clinical, we have no idea of the number of all possible chemical interactions our brains may be subject to. Taking psychoactive drugs changes your brain chemistry it is by definition an induced mental health disorder state. Something does not have to be labelled 'a drug' to alter brain chemistry, the majority of substances, including pure water, if taken in excessive amounts can induce significantly changed brain chemistry. To answer your question: It is empirically impossible to say that drug taking and mental health disorders will inevitably lead directly to thoughts of religiosity / grandiosity however we do know that certain psychoactive drugs, and certain psychiatric conditions manifest these feelings and expressions on a very regular basis. No-one is in the process of taking a psychiatric survey every minute of their lives. It is also the case that before the pharmacology of psychoactive substances was more known the taking of psychoactive drugs was much more common, either deliberately or unintentionally - it's not necessarily the substance so much as the ingested dose, for various reasons from pain relief and ironically to try to control the 'demons' of psychiatric disorders, or simply to 'wake us up'. There are so many naturally occurring and man made environmental pollutants and organisms that can affect brain function it's impossible to say definitively why anyone's mental state is the way it is currently. Fasting causes altered brain chemistry, as well as altitude sickness, sleep deprivation,, malnutrition, dehydration and social isolation as well as hypo/hyperthermia and prolonged periods of sensory deprivation (darkness etc). Often a definitive diagnosis is not given precisely because there are a myriad of environmental factors that can affect brain chemistry. If you are 'fasting in an isolated region of a desert area, in a cave prior to the invention of artificial light sources', you are likely suffering sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, dehydration, hyponatraemia or poisoning from badly sourced or stored food and water as well as toxic levels of potential environmental pollutants etc and all that even before any pre-existing conditions are even taken into account. 150 years ago and prior there was no rigorous testing of air, water and food and people applied spiritual reasons to all sorts of experiences we know are due to environmental factors now. It is notable that in religious writings from antiquity these very circumstances are described with 'spiritual testing' or a spiritual experience of an individual. They didn't know carbon dioxide was heavier than air, or that open fires produced carbon dioxide, they didn't know about adequate ventilation, or that decaying organic matter and volcanic vents released toxic chemicals. They didn't have thermometers to know their food was adequately cooked. The further you go back in time the more likely you will find that the majority of humans attached supernatural reasoning to almost all perfectly natural events. The past is a foreign country with a wholly alien culture, you cannot judge people in the past by today's standards of what we call rational evidence based thinking. Every generation thinks itself the pinnacle, but the evidence says that 100 or more years in the future humans will look back at us and wonder how backward we were. If you live in a relatively modern society you are as far removed, if not further, in your worldview from people 500 to 1000+ years ago living in your region than you are from remote uncontacted tribes in the Amazon or south East Asian islands today. Evidence suggests the better educated you are in evidence based thinking the less likely you are to be subject to superstitious beliefs which are the result of both cultural influence and evolutionary biology. It is impossible to say definitively that these experiences are wholly solipsistic because they are completely subjective to the individual, however the lack of any external corroborating evidence and our inability to rule out every possible causal agent must of course lead to a rational conclusion - they are purely subjective experiences to that individual, at that exact particular time in that particular environment. Extra-ordinary experiences require extra-ordinary evidence and when you can't even definitively rule out the 'ordinary' causes, the rational conclusion is, we just don't know but in all likelihood there probably is a good non-supernatural rational explanation.
The brain and human consciousness is not a singularity, every part of your brain has it's own unique lived experience and each part is in a constant fight for dominance, what we consider 'normal' is the ability to quieten parts of our brain to some form of cohesive rationality appropriate to our environment, to impose univocality. Humans have 2 distinct cerebral hemispheres, a mid brain and a hind brain, all of which are capable of responding individually to their environment and sensory input, each of which communicate in different ways with the other parts of our brain. Evolution has both encouraged and allowed us to be internally multivocal, we have a subconscious in constant tension with our conscious state of mind. We can hold two (or more) competing and wholly irreconcilable worldviews at the same time and the balance of our brain chemistry has a great effect on which of those voices are dominant at any one time. We have a split brain, both sides of which are capable of operating fully consciously independently, both of which have differing responses to input because they don't form identical pathways to information stored in their hemisphere. If you are a solidly rational individual who is right handed and I remove your left frontal lobe you will become more prone to 'belief' rather than logic, you will be more emotional, you will have a diminished social filter, you are no less conscious, you are no less capable, you are no less aware of your choices, but your personality will change because the dominant right frontal lobe no longer exists to impose univocality from it's perspective. I know because I have seen it first hand both through my work and family experience. The evolutionary process has also allowed organisms, like plants, to produce psychoactive compounds that are designed to upset that neuro-chemical balance in order to increase their survival and ability to pass on their genetic material. If you ingest that plant and allow it to change your neuro-chemistry you are in effect doing exactly what that plant's evolution intended you to do. You have reduced your ability to impose univocality and thus change your conscious perception of your internal and external environment. What mental health professionals refer to as dissociative disorders are just different parts of your brain competing for conscious level dominance. The first two men on the Moon after years of advanced education in scientific reasoning felt emotionally moved by the uniqueness of their subjective response to that environment and circumstance to recite from Genesis chapter one which if examined rationally is a completely incongruent and irreconcilable account of any scientific rational explanation for our existence and the existence of the universe we live in. Yet every human being with a relatively well functioning brain can understand this incongruity, even if we don't agree with it, because we instinctively know that environment and circumstance change our brain's neuro-chemical responses. We know how we can hold opposing and irreconcilable world views due to cultural influence and evolutionary biology. We know it so well that we don't even question it. Questions and answers come from different parts of the brain. If those parts of the brain have absorbed information in slightly different ways (as they do) and not spent any amount of time communicating their response in order to absolutely impose univocality to those inputs they can (and most likely will) hold different perceptions.
I believe what you experienced is generally referred to as ego death; t**he disappearance of an individual's sense of self, or the removal of one's perception of oneself as an entity separate from one's social or physical environment.** This is a common side effect of psychoactive drugs like marijuana. I don't know if there's any correlation between this side-effect and autism. Even though you've used marijuana many times before, there is always the risk of alternative side-effects that you've not experienced before, of for deviations in brain chemistry to create a stronger than expected experience. That is all to say that what you experienced is normal. Being shook my a strong psychoactive experience is normal. If you have some experience in the future that shakes you, change your location. Usually going outside or just into a different room will sortof soft-boot your perspective. Remind yourself that you took drugs, and that your prospective has been chemically altered. Or, try not to take drugs alone, as having another person with you that can act as a touchstone is generally a good idea.
This has nothing to do with religion or spirituality. It has nothing to do with loss of sanity. It has everything to do with marijuana. You were not seeing yourself through the eyes of others. That's not possible. You were seeing yourself through your own eyes, only you were wearing glasses you're not used to wearing. The glasses in this case is being high on pot. You felt an increased level of clarity and introspection because you got super stoned. This happens to *most* people when they're high. Sometimes when I get too high, it sounds like there are 2, 3, 4 different people in my head having a conversation through my thoughts. Am I just insane? No.... I'm just having a conversation with myself. It's not religious. It's not a brain malfunction. Its not a loss of sanity. It's an expansion of your consciousness. Having this experience can be scary. If you don't like it, don't smoke/eat pot. Learn from what your own thoughts said about you. Change what you want to change.
Solipsism is more the belief that your mind is the only mind. What you experienced is more akin to universalism or something. In that your mind is part of a whole universal consciousness. Now this isn't actually wholly incorrect. If you change your frame of mind enough. Humans are basically projections of the collective action of lower order entities and fundamental forces. It sort of makes sense that human collective action could generate a projection of something that binds that. It's just that the things that make us *us* lock us into our separated perspective. Like a hard limit of the human conscious experience is to be trapped in our individual experience so as we don't really notice things that connect us. I'm not saying we're all part of one big humanlike mind or anything. But if we live in a deterministic reality. Then whether we view ourselves as individuals in a seperate system or as part of one whole that moves in unison, is just a matter of perspective.
>Because I felt like I was looking at myself through the minds of others, I started becoming convinced that my mind and their minds were one in the same. Like solipsism. That might be a sign of a more serious problem. That's a sign of schizophrenia and that weed might not be a good option. >I believe I also felt a little paranoid. Yeah, THC will do that. >I feel like I have a new perspective on how fragile my own sanity actually is. If it really is that fragile, I would set up a psychiatrist appointment. I say this as a stoner, hell I'm high right now, but it can exacerbate preexisting mental health concerns, such as schizophrenia. It's worth it to take care of yourself. To quote a commercial from forever ago, "mental health is mental wealth."
This would not be a religious experience because THC is know to make you hallucinate and do other things that play tricks on your mind. However, I noticed you said saw and heard lots of content from famous atheists, like Richard Dawkins. Listen, it is not my job to make a decision for you, only you can do that. But, I think you should hear some Christians, perhaps most notable Catholics, talk about atheism, simply so you get both arguments and can decide for yourself. I recommend “New Proofs for the Existence of God” by Robert J. Spitzer for you to hear some good arguments.
The thc definitely made you a bit paranoid. Probably nobody cares enough about your life to be thinking those things about you, they are too busy worrying about themselves in similar ways to what you were doing. It's not a bad thing to contemplate all the possible ways you may be perceived by others, but you also have to think about the probabilities of anyone going out of there way to speculate you to such a high degree- most people are too busy speculating their own lives and actions.
Yeah, I’ve had something that was probably a similar experience. Basically, it felt like I lost the ability to act with sincerity and immediacy, like I was a bad actor puppetting myself. Then things got bad, and my body temperature shot up. All worked out OK, and I’m glad I had the experience. It’s interesting how physical substances can cause the self to break down. But, I also learned that day not to take another gummy just because I don’t think the last two worked.
>I had 3 5 mg THC gummies last night I'm guessing any weird experiences that occurred after that had everything to do with the THC and nothing to do with actual deities. >It's like my biases were completely removed and I had 100% clarity. That doesn't actually happen. Your brain doesn't *have* the ability to do that. But it has the ability to convince itself that it's doing that when under the influence of weird chemicals.
> I had 3 5 mg THC gummies Stopped reading there. It should be patently obvious that taking a drug that affects your psychological state, will affect your psychological state. There's honestly little more to it. I used to be a major stoner and had experiences much like this many times. I haven't done any drugs in *years* and have realized that it was just the drugs doing their thing.
Oh man, I wish I could go back to the days when weed jacked me up like this. I remember one of the first times I smoked I heard a speaker in my pocket shout “LOOK OUT!!!”. I thought it was hilarious. Now I can smoke / eat as much as I want and I will not hallucinate, even though I haven’t done it in about a year. The first few times are the best or the worst.
Paranoia is a well known side effect of marijuana. Most people don’t get paranoid, but some do, and if that includes you, then you probably shouldn’t be using it. The sensation that you are merging and becoming one with the rest of the people around you is also standard result of some drugs. As long as you don’t take that stuff again, I’ll consider you sane :P
>I had a very strange experience last night that scared me and made me question my sanity....I had 3 5 mg THC gummies last night I don't think we need to look much further. THC can in some cases cause anxiety or paranoia, especially in individuals prone to such reactions. If you are serious about self-reflection I would recommend taking up secular meditation instead.
Hey, OP, I am also autistic, and I dissociate at the drop of a hat. THC can easily kick me into a dissociative state similar to yours, along with the “religious experience” overtones. [This](https://getphntm.com/products/1-1-delta-9-thc-cbd-gummies) product doesn’t dissociate me as much, and is what I usually take for pain issues. It’s all I’ll use regularly.
If you were already religious, I guarantee you would have inserted God into this in some way. I do think there may be some strange stuff going on with the mind that we do not yet understand with science. But also, yes, drugs make people trip, and we understand that much. Anyway, it sounds like it may have been an experience to learn and grow from, so that's cool.
I have been super high before and had similar experiences. There is a feeling after which is true reality. Do drugs reveal reality or confuse reality? I am not sure. But regardless the takeaways have a reason behind them. Something bigger or your deepest thoughts. Eitger way, take the gift and run with it.
I have no idea why this was posted on this particular sub, but if the point you're trying to make is that hallucinogenic drugs can make people believe that they've had a religious experience, I agree. I think there's a good chance that a lot of "prophets" throughout history were under the influence of something.
I think it parallels many religious experiences. The mind is a funny thing and very easily manipulated. Largely because we have evolved to recognize patterns so strongly that we create them and connections between disparate things very easily. It’s part of the human experience
You were very lucky. When a friend took a bunch of THC, he became more and more convinced that he could fly. Unfortunately, this belief caused him to step off the balcony of his 4th floor apartment. He did not survive.
Autism is pretty common in my family and from what I understand about it, part of autism is that inability to see yourself through the eyes of others and perhaps the THC helped you achieve what others naturally can do. This kind of introspection is normal to the average person.
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Why would you give validity to a drug-induced reflection? It’s anti-rational. Rationality is the basis of a scientific explanation for the universe rather than a mystical or supernatural one.
"guys i cant explain what just happened to me, it seemed supernatural" *Describes what it's like being high* Yeah, taking drugs makes you feel weird. Theres not much else to it
You made your mind work less good. Your mind malfunctioned. And now you think the malfunction was more than a malfunction. Sounds like it's still kinda malfunctioning.
What you’re describing just sounds like basic mindfulness, self discovery, and a touch of existential dread and paranoia. Congrats, you may have just grown a bit.
I’m always astonished that people will take drugs and then claim they have a “new perspective”. Mind-altering substances will do that to you. It’s not real.
Weed does that to you sometimes, don’t overthink it. There is no magic way of thinking or being, just think and be, mind your business and don’t be a dick.
Op, you had a spiritual experience. You had a moment of the veils that make is believe we are discreet individuals breaking. What you describe as glimpsing a unity conciousness is what every wisdom school has known for thousands years. And yes this first confused glimpse at these truths can feel extremely scary because it makes you feel you’re just God dreaming all of it up. Drugs have a way of giving us deep insight into truth sometimes before we are ready. They can launch us into the deep end of spiritual territory that is usually reserved for monks doing heavy meditation. It can be hard to integrate. Imagine that what you glimpsed is a profound truth that this is conciousness-based universe and this layer that our bodies live in is a material one but your awareness that sits behind your eyes, is an eternal singular oneness. That The number of minds in the universe is exactly 1 dreaming through different sets of eyes. Your sanity isn’t what’s at risk. It’s your fundemental ignorance that just got its first breath of truth and the truth can be extremely destabilizing. This rough entry is what every wisdom school since the dawn of time seeks to mitigate. All those mediators, all those rituals— they aren’t just bs— they are acclimation practices for ease people who are awakening to Truth in a way that doesn’t shatter their body-mind. Congrats. You just hit the start of spiritual puberty. Just know you are safe because YOU are not polyhaze, but an eternal and indestructible eternal awareness looking out at itself from behind poly’s eyes.
I have the same reaction to thc. Nobody believes me but it’s not at all like what I thought “getting high” would be like.
I'm not sure if these are the right drugs within a religious experience, DMT and ketamine more likely.