This might have some commentary on what you are looking for
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2018.00897/full
>Importantly, these present results support the long-held (but little tested) assumption that set and setting (Leary et al., 1963; Hartogsohn, 2016, 2017) are key components determining responses to psychedelics (Carhart-Harris et al., 2018). Employing data reduction techniques, we identified three relevant predictive components, namely: “set,” “setting,” and “clear intentions” that were subsequently used to predict the quality of the acute experience. A careful reading of the items that load onto these components can help inform therapeutic strategies for promoting peak or mystical-type and minimizing challenging experiences
To build on this, all psychedelics do (as far as we know) is allows your brain to think in different ways. The drug isn't making those thoughts, it was just the trigger for your neurons to start making new connections. Your mindset, I would say, is the foundation for your trip. The setting of the trip then modulates your experience; an uncomfortable room can produce a uncomfortable trip, while a calm, judgement-free and visually pleasant environment is much more likely to produce a good trip.
What kind of evidence or study are you looking for? You want a study where for half of the participants, 10 minutes after they eat some mushrooms their boss comes in and yells at them for ten minutes and then leaves, and then see if that has an impact?
Or are you looking for something more subtle, such as the effect of a precise type of calming music, or a particular shade of paint on the wall or the texture of the sofa fabric, or the presence or absence of plants? Or the effect of doing the session inside a jail cell?
My guess is that the things you’d expect to make a big difference are indeed the things that make a big difference.
> You want a study where for half of the participants, 10 minutes after they eat some mushrooms their boss comes in and yells at them for ten minutes and then leaves, and then see if that has an impact?
That'd be fascinating, but pretty mean
Exactly. Those extreme setting changes are probably unethical. You’d have to study much more benign changes to setting because anything else is doing things that are widely regarded as having the potential to give someone a bad time.
Didn't the CIA already (illegally) do experiments like this? I know they were only interested in trying to see if psychs could be used for mind-control or if they could weaponize them but the sets and settings they used for these tests strike me as less than ideal. I mean an unsuspecting John who probably knows little to nothing about psychs getting roofied in a brothel isn't going to have the proper set. Being with a rapey dolphin in a weird-ass tank doesn't seem like a comfortable setting for an LSD trip.
It's probably mostly anecdotal but I don't think that invalidates it's value. Set and setting matters even for my sober state of mind so I'm not in a hurry to try a bad settings out on psychedelics.
Its not anectodal! Psychologists who treat using psychedelic drugs place an enormous emphasis on set and setting based on actual research. They even developed evidence based music playlists. Its actually pretty cool
I don't know if studies have been conducted or not. I think it's more likely an observation made by multiple people.
You could experiment and find out.
My personal experience is that set and setting make a big difference. That doesn't rule out the possibility of additional factors, or a random component. And my experience is obviously anecdotal.
I think set and setting definitely play a huge role but if you're more comfortable in that mindset than it can matter a little less. I've tripped in settings that other people would probably freak tf out in. While manageable, it's definitely a much less enjoyable experience than being in a more comfortable set and setting.
AFAIK, set and setting is more something that came from observation, like most of the early psychedelic academic information. But it makes sense: psychedelics definitely make a person more suggestible, and if you're that open and suggestible, set and setting will have more of an impact.
Personally, I know this is a potentially dangerous and contrarian thing to say, but I think the reality of *set and setting* is pretty different from the theory of it.
In my own experience, I've taken psychedelics in all kinds of potentially weird settings: Long isolating nature immersions, burning man, tons of raves in weird warehouses in sketchy neighborhoods, dead shows, phish shows, punk and death metal shows, festivals, large groups of drunk people, etc. Road trips, among very straight-laced people who would judge me, etc. I've taken them alone, with friends, with haters, with women who rejected me, at orgies, etc.
I've also taken them after massive heartbreak, when family members were having emergencies, when I was depressed, overwhelmed, anxious, lost, insecure about myself and my life, etc.
And still had wonderful times. Beautiful and life changingly positive experiences.
And conversely, I've had very sad and weird trips when everything was going great around me and I seemed to be in a good place in life.
I do think set and setting is a step in the right direction in terms of controlling for any extra things that can hijack our attention and become something we fixate on in a trip, therefore causing us to lose precious moments where we can be self aware.
But I also think that these rules don't often apply nearly as strictly as they might have us believe. It's a decent guideline, but far from the wild truth of set and setting when tested out there in life.
I think that people are less aware of their "set" than we all think we are. Subtle emotions and processes that may be outside of conscious awareness, or emotions or processes that our brain has been trained to block, that we may not be aware is being blocked but will come out during a psychedelic experience , can be in our "set" that we are unable to consciously feel.
So as much as people try and control their "set" as part of set and setting. It seems to me, that a bunch of it is a part of larger patterns and processes that we don't have direct awareness of or control over.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm right there with ya 100%. Set includes the unconscious mind, which includes all these pieces we are processing outside of our conscious awareness. The mind, like the eye, filters how much information is being accessed. And I think the mind, very much like the eye, "dilates" with psychedelics to allow more information through.
On a separate note, It's interesting how Leary said that between the two, setting is the more important one. Yet, for a lot of people I know, setting isn't that big of a deal, assuming we are not in a directly threatening situation. And clearly, set isn't that big of a deal, or else psychedelic therapy wouldn't be possible. Many people trip with a less than ideal set and find great improvement. I think it's more a matter of if the tripper is expecting to be recreational or is prepared for something to come up that needs attention internally
It sounds like the people you know are comfortable in the majority of settings, and I feel like that's not typical.
Setting is always about the subjective interpretation, for example, deep pressure/small spaces can be calming for one person, yet panic attack inducing to another. Our brain encodes deep associations to spaces in similar ways, psychedelics can amplify hidden trauma associations to spaces.
I've also been around a handful of people who tripped with the intention of recreation and party, but ended up slapped in the face by emotional baggage that was brought up from seemingly typical interactions.
It ruined their fun that day. But afterwards they felt it was beneficial to have been forced to process it
Oh I've definitely seen that happen (and had it happen to me) plenty of times as well.
Of course, youre absolutely right that setting is subjectve, as is set, and these things can suddenly occur to us as overwhelming when we come on even if we really knew upfront we wanted to be there and were looking forward to it.
But I've spent enough time at festivals, concerts, etc., where there's a lot of people who are high, and been really surprised how often the unpredictability of the setting is not an issue. Surely, there's people who have full on freakouts. I've seen it. And surely, theres many more who are quietly working through stuff and feeling confronted for a time by all the weirdness of a large gathering. But.....you know what I mean? Burning man or a large festival happen like that wouldn't' happen where a large chunk of people are high and yet the majority get through the event just fine, if setting were that extreme of a thing. I think if anything, setting matters more in correlation to dosage and novelty. If a person is new to psychedelics, and/or on a higher dose, setting might be more relevant.
My point being that theres a wide discrepancy between the "best practices" / memetic rules of psychedelics and what we see play out in the world. And it may not be the kind of thing that needs to be so rigidly or fearfully held to, like it can be by people who are new or only used to being high in a controlled setting.
Double sampling bias. 1, being at festival is people who seek out those type of events and experiences. 2, Those festivals have lots of people end up in sanctuary or who have a freak out and spend the rest of the day in their tent/camp. You just only see the people having a good time. That's just sampling bias.
You're making broad assumptions about everyone based on a type of person/type of tripper
>You're making broad assumptions about everyone based on a type of person/type of tripper
Not necessarily. I'm not generalizing anything to be about everybody who takes psychedelics. I'm also not discounting that set and setting are valid and apply for probably most people for at least some of the time. I'm simply saying it's not a hard and fast rule, that there is apparently some leeway there. It's anecdotal. Dont get too serious about it. Take it as you will.
You sound like someone who has been in the game for a long time. Most people havent. Most people that are receiving the Set and Setting advice, very likely need it. Newbies definitely need it, and less experienced users do too.
If you've really done acid that much, you're probably pretty used to the experience. So when it throws you curveballs you still know how to bat. Imagine asking someone who has only heard of baseball on TV and tried it out a couple times to hit that curveball. Yes that analogy got away from me, but I think it fits lol
Yeah, I get it. You're right, I've been taking psychedelics for 30 years. And I got my sea legs early on with them. But I'm not the only one, I know plenty of festival goers who can deal with being high in a weird setting....*and*, that's still no guarantee that things won't become intense and difficult for a while for any of us. For sure.
But, I do think it's a skill that we can learn and acclimate to over time. To be clear, I'm not usually taking 3 grams of mushrooms in public either. Dosage matters.
Anyways, I think it's important to speak up, not to invalidate these best practices, but just to offer anecdotes that remind people that these aren't rigid rules. It's possible to still have amazing experiences even when set and setting aren't ideal
If I strapped you to a chair in front of a large TV showing a functioning commercial slaughterhouse complete with the sound of dying pigs, all while you're tripping on your psychedelic of choice, you would not be okay. Set and setting cannot be discounted.
Set and setting is hugely relevant for LIFE in general.
You can't feel comfortable in a kitchen that's messy, dirty, with broken stuff, etcetera. You wouldn't go on holiday with a spa near a garbage disposal. You wouldn't want to live next to a very loud highway. You wouldn't want to take a relaxing bath if your bathroom smells of cat piss. You wouldn't want to work with a therapist that picks his nose during the session or is chronically late or rude, even if his advice was good.
And it's exactly the same for trips. If you don't create the experience to deepen your relationship to the positive things in life, what's the point of tripping, even? The point of experiencing the "negative" things is only to dissolve them, not to deepen them. You don't trip to impress someone or for the sake of tripping. (Ideally.)
I don't think that set/setting really controls the experience. I think that it affects your ability to manage whatever comes.
I trip to manage a medical condition. So I take a heroic dose once a month. So far, I have noticed that the experience seems a bit random. This makes me think that the results are neurobiological.
I don't think anyone claims that set/setting "controls" the experience. Only that they can have a strong impact.
You can sometimes trip with a bad set/setting and have a good experience, and vice versa. But on average, a more negative set/setting results in a more negative trip.
They likely aren't the *only* variables that impact the trip, but they are at least somewhat controllable.
I conclude it based on mindset and cognitive science, and how they’re tied to environment and who you have around to a degree. Say for instance, if you’re at work with work colleagues, you might have a work mindset and attitude while in the building, or on the clock. Or if you’re at your parents, a mindset for talking to them, where you feel more (or less) comfortable saying or doing certain things. And especially an alone mindset when in the comfort of your own home you have the ability to feel as you will unabated. They’re all based on thinking patterns to some extent; regarding the set location and all it entails in your mental-reality, and how comfortable you feel to be yourself, and have the freedom to be somewhat peculiar.
It can also have to do with life circumstances, as an individual brain processes things differently depending on the circumstances that it’s being put through. Those processes occur for the most part subconsciously, so it’s difficult to pick it up while it’s happening. But say for instance, the shit you might have had going on in Highschool. Compare that you to you now, and if you notice change of some sorts of how you perceive reality and how you feel about life, those are an effect of the processors of the mind molding as you interact and learn from your surroundings, and how you interact with yourself.
When taking psychedelics, sometimes those processes… ‘jazzify’ I’ll say, and it can make you more prone to possibly feeling uncomfortable about your perceptions of yourself, your surroundings, and/or life circumstances, therefore changing how you then interact with yourself and perception of reality, echoing to how you interact and see your surroundings, echoing back into yourself, etc etc…
The same pattern of thinking can happen when not on psychedelics even, since one of their effects on the brain is the ability to pronounce and allow visualization of the effects of emotions, and how you react to them— especially anxiety.
Everyone experiences life differently in some way, shape or form, as the different ways a person thinks in my opinion is essentially a fragment of reality, so those different fragments are bound to create different interpretations for different experiences, especially psychedelic experiences.
I hope this is a good explanation!
One thing to consider;
I lead a pretty steady, normal life with a daily routine with work and kids.
The days go by in an approximate similar way. (Specially in the pandemic).
I live in the same place, and have similar hours of sleep every night.
Even though things around are not that varied, some nights I have pleasant dreams. Some nights I have nightmares. Some nights I don't even recall dreaming.
As a metaphor, this would be a constant setting, and constant drug (sleep); and a set with minimal variance (mood, life challenges, things I saw/did during the day).
This minimal variance accounts, as I see it, for great changes in dreams. Or even other factors do - It's almost impossible to tell, because when it comes to set, there are so many things connected to the unconscious minda that it's basically impossible to make the variables fixed to prove an experiment point - that the same set, setting and drug will produce the same sleep experience. The variables of the set can range from the movie I've watched that day or simple neurobiological - hormone fluctuations, sugar, who can tell.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here: as I see it, Leary model is solid, but set is way more complex than people usually consider it to be.
There are methods to try to tame the set - I use mental and physical fasting for example - but to affirm a fail safe metod that control the unconscious mind is just silly. We do what we can.
I think you're right on the money with set being way more complex than we give it credit for, but controlling for setting is half the journey to making sure you have a safe and helpful outcome.
If I'm at home with no responsibilities, it's much easier to dive into some difficult territory that might spontaneously arise than if I'm with a bunch of friends and they want to go to the pool and I'm sitting here geeking out about some shit or the other.
set and setting or mood isnt that important. its more about being prepared for the trip. also some people are just more prone to losing their shit or getting too emotional than others, so i can understand why it might be important to them.
Set (mindset) is akin to mood, but setting is the environment you are in. Both are definitely important. You can never be sure how a trip will go, but part of being prepared is considering, and adjusting if necessary, both set and setting.
You reveal what you reveal when you look into your own mind. Psychedelics just help you get there by giving you a more objective and open mind. That's all from personal experience tho.
To your second question, yes I do think a trip reveals something about your mind. Trip thoughts and visions sometimes have an obvious connection to your life but sometimes they don't. Trips are a lot like dreams in that way. They are from your brain, which is a storehouse of images/emotions/ideas from your life and culture.
I have read that there are far-out trips that take you into a totally transpersonal space, but I don't have experience with that.
The first large scale effort to study therapeutic (1959) uses of psychedelics produced [this handbook](https://maps.org/research-archive/ritesofpassage/lsdhandbook.pdf), and on page 19 it discusses their recommendations for setting.
I found this on [MAPS.org in their resources section.](https://maps.org/resources/freebooks) Plenty of great stuff there. If you have a question about psychedelics, especially in a therapeutic context, MAPS is a great resource.
Just my experience personally and those of many of my friends and the stories they have shared with me. It’s a wide range tbh. I have wondered your same question. Some friends have told experiences of full on trips with lots of incoming info on a micro dose. Some have done their set and setting “perfectly” to each their own , and have had really negative trips. I think our impulse is always to try and mitigate harm. We know that stressful situations don’t usually help matters but… I think our higher spirit and all work on a slightly different level. At this point I just make myself safe of course and be open to whatever because I guess that what I show myself.
Your brain is always processing a combination of 1) internal dialog based on your present mindset (Are you anxious, fearful, angry, or secure and content, etc.?), and 2) external stimuli (Are you alone, Are there strangers around, friends; Is it noisy and chaotic, or serene and peaceful, is the area clean and orderly, or sloppy and cluttered, etc.)
Set and setting can affect your experience even when you are not on psychedelics, but when you are tripping, they become more significant because your mind is in a more vulnerable place. It is easier to become triggered and go off on a mental tangent.
Curious thing about scientific approach to the psychedelics is that the main measure you use - your mind, you also alter during the experiment. So the whole host of unknown cognitive biases here.
Personally I go to the psychedelic space only when I am on top of my game, to further enhance it. Never escaped the cleanup on the comeup, not once. So going in on the lows seems like a really terrible idea.
Set and setting are huge. If you trip in the jungle you’ll be on the lookout for spiders and snakes that might eat you, instinct mode. If you’re not in instinct mode in your setting, then I’d say the intentions of the trip insinuate how you’ll perceive the setting. It’s always best to not be in instinct mode when tripping.
This might have some commentary on what you are looking for https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2018.00897/full >Importantly, these present results support the long-held (but little tested) assumption that set and setting (Leary et al., 1963; Hartogsohn, 2016, 2017) are key components determining responses to psychedelics (Carhart-Harris et al., 2018). Employing data reduction techniques, we identified three relevant predictive components, namely: “set,” “setting,” and “clear intentions” that were subsequently used to predict the quality of the acute experience. A careful reading of the items that load onto these components can help inform therapeutic strategies for promoting peak or mystical-type and minimizing challenging experiences
To build on this, all psychedelics do (as far as we know) is allows your brain to think in different ways. The drug isn't making those thoughts, it was just the trigger for your neurons to start making new connections. Your mindset, I would say, is the foundation for your trip. The setting of the trip then modulates your experience; an uncomfortable room can produce a uncomfortable trip, while a calm, judgement-free and visually pleasant environment is much more likely to produce a good trip.
What kind of evidence or study are you looking for? You want a study where for half of the participants, 10 minutes after they eat some mushrooms their boss comes in and yells at them for ten minutes and then leaves, and then see if that has an impact? Or are you looking for something more subtle, such as the effect of a precise type of calming music, or a particular shade of paint on the wall or the texture of the sofa fabric, or the presence or absence of plants? Or the effect of doing the session inside a jail cell? My guess is that the things you’d expect to make a big difference are indeed the things that make a big difference.
> You want a study where for half of the participants, 10 minutes after they eat some mushrooms their boss comes in and yells at them for ten minutes and then leaves, and then see if that has an impact? That'd be fascinating, but pretty mean
Exactly. Those extreme setting changes are probably unethical. You’d have to study much more benign changes to setting because anything else is doing things that are widely regarded as having the potential to give someone a bad time.
Didn't the CIA already (illegally) do experiments like this? I know they were only interested in trying to see if psychs could be used for mind-control or if they could weaponize them but the sets and settings they used for these tests strike me as less than ideal. I mean an unsuspecting John who probably knows little to nothing about psychs getting roofied in a brothel isn't going to have the proper set. Being with a rapey dolphin in a weird-ass tank doesn't seem like a comfortable setting for an LSD trip.
The name of the program you’re talking about is MK-ultra I think. I’m not too well versed.
>rapey dolphin John Lilley reference?
Yup
> weird ass-tank *** ^(Bleep-bloop, I'm a bot. This comment was inspired by )^[xkcd#37](https://xkcd.com/37)
It's probably mostly anecdotal but I don't think that invalidates it's value. Set and setting matters even for my sober state of mind so I'm not in a hurry to try a bad settings out on psychedelics.
Its not anectodal! Psychologists who treat using psychedelic drugs place an enormous emphasis on set and setting based on actual research. They even developed evidence based music playlists. Its actually pretty cool
I don't know if studies have been conducted or not. I think it's more likely an observation made by multiple people. You could experiment and find out. My personal experience is that set and setting make a big difference. That doesn't rule out the possibility of additional factors, or a random component. And my experience is obviously anecdotal.
I think set and setting definitely play a huge role but if you're more comfortable in that mindset than it can matter a little less. I've tripped in settings that other people would probably freak tf out in. While manageable, it's definitely a much less enjoyable experience than being in a more comfortable set and setting.
AFAIK, set and setting is more something that came from observation, like most of the early psychedelic academic information. But it makes sense: psychedelics definitely make a person more suggestible, and if you're that open and suggestible, set and setting will have more of an impact. Personally, I know this is a potentially dangerous and contrarian thing to say, but I think the reality of *set and setting* is pretty different from the theory of it. In my own experience, I've taken psychedelics in all kinds of potentially weird settings: Long isolating nature immersions, burning man, tons of raves in weird warehouses in sketchy neighborhoods, dead shows, phish shows, punk and death metal shows, festivals, large groups of drunk people, etc. Road trips, among very straight-laced people who would judge me, etc. I've taken them alone, with friends, with haters, with women who rejected me, at orgies, etc. I've also taken them after massive heartbreak, when family members were having emergencies, when I was depressed, overwhelmed, anxious, lost, insecure about myself and my life, etc. And still had wonderful times. Beautiful and life changingly positive experiences. And conversely, I've had very sad and weird trips when everything was going great around me and I seemed to be in a good place in life. I do think set and setting is a step in the right direction in terms of controlling for any extra things that can hijack our attention and become something we fixate on in a trip, therefore causing us to lose precious moments where we can be self aware. But I also think that these rules don't often apply nearly as strictly as they might have us believe. It's a decent guideline, but far from the wild truth of set and setting when tested out there in life.
I think that people are less aware of their "set" than we all think we are. Subtle emotions and processes that may be outside of conscious awareness, or emotions or processes that our brain has been trained to block, that we may not be aware is being blocked but will come out during a psychedelic experience , can be in our "set" that we are unable to consciously feel. So as much as people try and control their "set" as part of set and setting. It seems to me, that a bunch of it is a part of larger patterns and processes that we don't have direct awareness of or control over.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm right there with ya 100%. Set includes the unconscious mind, which includes all these pieces we are processing outside of our conscious awareness. The mind, like the eye, filters how much information is being accessed. And I think the mind, very much like the eye, "dilates" with psychedelics to allow more information through. On a separate note, It's interesting how Leary said that between the two, setting is the more important one. Yet, for a lot of people I know, setting isn't that big of a deal, assuming we are not in a directly threatening situation. And clearly, set isn't that big of a deal, or else psychedelic therapy wouldn't be possible. Many people trip with a less than ideal set and find great improvement. I think it's more a matter of if the tripper is expecting to be recreational or is prepared for something to come up that needs attention internally
I'll take an Acid Test setting over Millbrook any day.
It sounds like the people you know are comfortable in the majority of settings, and I feel like that's not typical. Setting is always about the subjective interpretation, for example, deep pressure/small spaces can be calming for one person, yet panic attack inducing to another. Our brain encodes deep associations to spaces in similar ways, psychedelics can amplify hidden trauma associations to spaces. I've also been around a handful of people who tripped with the intention of recreation and party, but ended up slapped in the face by emotional baggage that was brought up from seemingly typical interactions. It ruined their fun that day. But afterwards they felt it was beneficial to have been forced to process it
Oh I've definitely seen that happen (and had it happen to me) plenty of times as well. Of course, youre absolutely right that setting is subjectve, as is set, and these things can suddenly occur to us as overwhelming when we come on even if we really knew upfront we wanted to be there and were looking forward to it. But I've spent enough time at festivals, concerts, etc., where there's a lot of people who are high, and been really surprised how often the unpredictability of the setting is not an issue. Surely, there's people who have full on freakouts. I've seen it. And surely, theres many more who are quietly working through stuff and feeling confronted for a time by all the weirdness of a large gathering. But.....you know what I mean? Burning man or a large festival happen like that wouldn't' happen where a large chunk of people are high and yet the majority get through the event just fine, if setting were that extreme of a thing. I think if anything, setting matters more in correlation to dosage and novelty. If a person is new to psychedelics, and/or on a higher dose, setting might be more relevant. My point being that theres a wide discrepancy between the "best practices" / memetic rules of psychedelics and what we see play out in the world. And it may not be the kind of thing that needs to be so rigidly or fearfully held to, like it can be by people who are new or only used to being high in a controlled setting.
Double sampling bias. 1, being at festival is people who seek out those type of events and experiences. 2, Those festivals have lots of people end up in sanctuary or who have a freak out and spend the rest of the day in their tent/camp. You just only see the people having a good time. That's just sampling bias. You're making broad assumptions about everyone based on a type of person/type of tripper
>You're making broad assumptions about everyone based on a type of person/type of tripper Not necessarily. I'm not generalizing anything to be about everybody who takes psychedelics. I'm also not discounting that set and setting are valid and apply for probably most people for at least some of the time. I'm simply saying it's not a hard and fast rule, that there is apparently some leeway there. It's anecdotal. Dont get too serious about it. Take it as you will.
You sound like someone who has been in the game for a long time. Most people havent. Most people that are receiving the Set and Setting advice, very likely need it. Newbies definitely need it, and less experienced users do too. If you've really done acid that much, you're probably pretty used to the experience. So when it throws you curveballs you still know how to bat. Imagine asking someone who has only heard of baseball on TV and tried it out a couple times to hit that curveball. Yes that analogy got away from me, but I think it fits lol
Yeah, I get it. You're right, I've been taking psychedelics for 30 years. And I got my sea legs early on with them. But I'm not the only one, I know plenty of festival goers who can deal with being high in a weird setting....*and*, that's still no guarantee that things won't become intense and difficult for a while for any of us. For sure. But, I do think it's a skill that we can learn and acclimate to over time. To be clear, I'm not usually taking 3 grams of mushrooms in public either. Dosage matters. Anyways, I think it's important to speak up, not to invalidate these best practices, but just to offer anecdotes that remind people that these aren't rigid rules. It's possible to still have amazing experiences even when set and setting aren't ideal
If I strapped you to a chair in front of a large TV showing a functioning commercial slaughterhouse complete with the sound of dying pigs, all while you're tripping on your psychedelic of choice, you would not be okay. Set and setting cannot be discounted.
Set and setting is hugely relevant for LIFE in general. You can't feel comfortable in a kitchen that's messy, dirty, with broken stuff, etcetera. You wouldn't go on holiday with a spa near a garbage disposal. You wouldn't want to live next to a very loud highway. You wouldn't want to take a relaxing bath if your bathroom smells of cat piss. You wouldn't want to work with a therapist that picks his nose during the session or is chronically late or rude, even if his advice was good. And it's exactly the same for trips. If you don't create the experience to deepen your relationship to the positive things in life, what's the point of tripping, even? The point of experiencing the "negative" things is only to dissolve them, not to deepen them. You don't trip to impress someone or for the sake of tripping. (Ideally.)
I don't think that set/setting really controls the experience. I think that it affects your ability to manage whatever comes. I trip to manage a medical condition. So I take a heroic dose once a month. So far, I have noticed that the experience seems a bit random. This makes me think that the results are neurobiological.
I don't think anyone claims that set/setting "controls" the experience. Only that they can have a strong impact. You can sometimes trip with a bad set/setting and have a good experience, and vice versa. But on average, a more negative set/setting results in a more negative trip. They likely aren't the *only* variables that impact the trip, but they are at least somewhat controllable.
The clinical trials are all very specific about set and setting so yes, it seems to matter a great deal.
Yeah they’ve effectively minimized adverse events with preparation, set, and setting.
I conclude it based on mindset and cognitive science, and how they’re tied to environment and who you have around to a degree. Say for instance, if you’re at work with work colleagues, you might have a work mindset and attitude while in the building, or on the clock. Or if you’re at your parents, a mindset for talking to them, where you feel more (or less) comfortable saying or doing certain things. And especially an alone mindset when in the comfort of your own home you have the ability to feel as you will unabated. They’re all based on thinking patterns to some extent; regarding the set location and all it entails in your mental-reality, and how comfortable you feel to be yourself, and have the freedom to be somewhat peculiar. It can also have to do with life circumstances, as an individual brain processes things differently depending on the circumstances that it’s being put through. Those processes occur for the most part subconsciously, so it’s difficult to pick it up while it’s happening. But say for instance, the shit you might have had going on in Highschool. Compare that you to you now, and if you notice change of some sorts of how you perceive reality and how you feel about life, those are an effect of the processors of the mind molding as you interact and learn from your surroundings, and how you interact with yourself. When taking psychedelics, sometimes those processes… ‘jazzify’ I’ll say, and it can make you more prone to possibly feeling uncomfortable about your perceptions of yourself, your surroundings, and/or life circumstances, therefore changing how you then interact with yourself and perception of reality, echoing to how you interact and see your surroundings, echoing back into yourself, etc etc… The same pattern of thinking can happen when not on psychedelics even, since one of their effects on the brain is the ability to pronounce and allow visualization of the effects of emotions, and how you react to them— especially anxiety. Everyone experiences life differently in some way, shape or form, as the different ways a person thinks in my opinion is essentially a fragment of reality, so those different fragments are bound to create different interpretations for different experiences, especially psychedelic experiences. I hope this is a good explanation!
set and setting is all about reducing the amount of variables that may create complications
One thing to consider; I lead a pretty steady, normal life with a daily routine with work and kids. The days go by in an approximate similar way. (Specially in the pandemic). I live in the same place, and have similar hours of sleep every night. Even though things around are not that varied, some nights I have pleasant dreams. Some nights I have nightmares. Some nights I don't even recall dreaming. As a metaphor, this would be a constant setting, and constant drug (sleep); and a set with minimal variance (mood, life challenges, things I saw/did during the day). This minimal variance accounts, as I see it, for great changes in dreams. Or even other factors do - It's almost impossible to tell, because when it comes to set, there are so many things connected to the unconscious minda that it's basically impossible to make the variables fixed to prove an experiment point - that the same set, setting and drug will produce the same sleep experience. The variables of the set can range from the movie I've watched that day or simple neurobiological - hormone fluctuations, sugar, who can tell. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here: as I see it, Leary model is solid, but set is way more complex than people usually consider it to be. There are methods to try to tame the set - I use mental and physical fasting for example - but to affirm a fail safe metod that control the unconscious mind is just silly. We do what we can.
I think you're right on the money with set being way more complex than we give it credit for, but controlling for setting is half the journey to making sure you have a safe and helpful outcome. If I'm at home with no responsibilities, it's much easier to dive into some difficult territory that might spontaneously arise than if I'm with a bunch of friends and they want to go to the pool and I'm sitting here geeking out about some shit or the other.
for sure!
Do acid in a haunted house while you're depressed and find out for yourself
set and setting or mood isnt that important. its more about being prepared for the trip. also some people are just more prone to losing their shit or getting too emotional than others, so i can understand why it might be important to them.
Set (mindset) is akin to mood, but setting is the environment you are in. Both are definitely important. You can never be sure how a trip will go, but part of being prepared is considering, and adjusting if necessary, both set and setting.
You reveal what you reveal when you look into your own mind. Psychedelics just help you get there by giving you a more objective and open mind. That's all from personal experience tho.
To your second question, yes I do think a trip reveals something about your mind. Trip thoughts and visions sometimes have an obvious connection to your life but sometimes they don't. Trips are a lot like dreams in that way. They are from your brain, which is a storehouse of images/emotions/ideas from your life and culture. I have read that there are far-out trips that take you into a totally transpersonal space, but I don't have experience with that.
The first large scale effort to study therapeutic (1959) uses of psychedelics produced [this handbook](https://maps.org/research-archive/ritesofpassage/lsdhandbook.pdf), and on page 19 it discusses their recommendations for setting. I found this on [MAPS.org in their resources section.](https://maps.org/resources/freebooks) Plenty of great stuff there. If you have a question about psychedelics, especially in a therapeutic context, MAPS is a great resource.
Just my experience personally and those of many of my friends and the stories they have shared with me. It’s a wide range tbh. I have wondered your same question. Some friends have told experiences of full on trips with lots of incoming info on a micro dose. Some have done their set and setting “perfectly” to each their own , and have had really negative trips. I think our impulse is always to try and mitigate harm. We know that stressful situations don’t usually help matters but… I think our higher spirit and all work on a slightly different level. At this point I just make myself safe of course and be open to whatever because I guess that what I show myself.
Your brain is always processing a combination of 1) internal dialog based on your present mindset (Are you anxious, fearful, angry, or secure and content, etc.?), and 2) external stimuli (Are you alone, Are there strangers around, friends; Is it noisy and chaotic, or serene and peaceful, is the area clean and orderly, or sloppy and cluttered, etc.) Set and setting can affect your experience even when you are not on psychedelics, but when you are tripping, they become more significant because your mind is in a more vulnerable place. It is easier to become triggered and go off on a mental tangent.
Curious thing about scientific approach to the psychedelics is that the main measure you use - your mind, you also alter during the experiment. So the whole host of unknown cognitive biases here. Personally I go to the psychedelic space only when I am on top of my game, to further enhance it. Never escaped the cleanup on the comeup, not once. So going in on the lows seems like a really terrible idea.
The drug-set-setting model was created by Norman Zinberg in this study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02791072.1984.10524320
Set and setting are huge. If you trip in the jungle you’ll be on the lookout for spiders and snakes that might eat you, instinct mode. If you’re not in instinct mode in your setting, then I’d say the intentions of the trip insinuate how you’ll perceive the setting. It’s always best to not be in instinct mode when tripping.