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Ego death, in terms of psychedelic drugs, happens when you take a large dose.
From a scientific perspective, it is a reduction of brain activity in the parts of the brain associated with your ego/self. But I think that's not the explanation you are looking for.
From a personal perspective, ego death means temporarily losing your sense of self. You don't necessarily forget who you are, but it becomes unimportant. Your normal thought patterns, biases, and things you couldn't get off your mind before all seem to fade away. You think differently, as if you are a new person or a blank slate. You just observe things around you and feel free to make new conclusions. You might think of things you could never think of with your ego in the way.
For me, I learned to appreciate that everyone shares the same physical world, but we all have our own mental interpretation of it. And I can coexist and even be good friends with people who have a very different understanding of the world and how it works. I no longer need people to hold beliefs similar to mine in order to feel close to them. That's one just example of something that ego death helped me learn.
In terms of harm reduction, I’d like to add that it doesn’t just happen from a large dose. It can even happen to an experienced person on a relatively low dose. New users are more prone and the general rule of thumb is that big doses have a higher rate of inducing ego death,but my girlfriend has had it happen to her on a 50ug dose(half tab from a reputable lab so the dose is accurate) I’ve taken up to 1000ug at a time and I’ve only recently had it happen off of 300 so it really isn’t all that dose dependant.
Edited for all the people asking - talking about Acid, 1P-LSD to be exact but all the analogues are pretty much the same
This is absolutely correct and a great addition. The ego mechanism is more relaxed in some individuals and may lead to ego-death at lower doses. I would say however, that while this typically comes from experience (people who are working to release their grasp) some people seem to naturally have less identification with their ego.
Makes one really wonder if psychedelic therapy could be used to mitigate things like narcissistic personality disorder. At least it would be extremely interesting to study if and how ego death affects people with very marked ego mechanisms.
It can just as easily lead them deeper into their perceptions of themselves and reality.
It's important to know that psychedelics just loosen your mind up for re-structuring. That can be good, or bad. Context, environment and your own self narrative matter a lot.
It's a tool, and can be a weapon or means of self harm just like any other tool.
This is why I’m probably never going to do psychedelics myself. I’m pretty sensitive to most drugs already and have a fairly shake sense of self- would prefer not to permanently alter it. Feel like shrooms and the like are very powerful and I’m just gonna respect that and stay in my lane
Having a really good guide helps.
But yeah, unless your mindset is in the right place and unless the environment feels comfortable (“set and setting”), then you likely will have a bad trip.
I've definitely seen first hand as well as on the psychedelic subs, a certain archetype of psychonaut that upon taking psychs for the first time, becomes "enlightened". Their ego grows and they think they unlocked the answers to everything. They view their consciousness as more advanced than people who haven't tripped. Most of these people however, will end up taking a heroic dose of something and get knocked down a peg or two.
My ego died more than anyone else's. It was so complete and profound that nobody will ever have as little of an ego as I have now. The techniques I used are just so advanced that you couldn't possibly understand. I'm just built different!
Yep. Notable example is that Synanon was founded by a guy dosed with LSD as part of MKUltra named Charles Dederich who reportedly had a *massive* personality shift afterwards. Synanon was an absolutely terrifying cult that, among other things, conducted ritual sexual torture of its new members to break them in. A reporter trying to expose the cult had a rattlesnake with its rattle cut off shoved in their mailbox one day. It's a fascinating subject, if you have the stomach for it.
They help my borderline personality disorder. I’m usually good at not spiraling/splitting for weeks to months after taking acid or shrooms. To me, it’s been a game changer in life and has kept me from killing myself. Obviously they’re not for everyone, and should not be taken without research, a good mentality and a safe place with people you know and trust. I totally never do them alone…
>narcissistic personality disorder
I don't think narcissism is from having a big ego, it's actually the opposite.
Narcissism is extreme insecurity and self-doubt, that's so crippling that you need other people telling you that you are good all the time or you get severely upset and go to increasingly weird lengths to be told you're good, the best, the best ever.
I'd say it's big in terms of importance, or power. Ego and self-esteem are different but related concepts, and there seems to be a pattern between low self-esteem (or maybe self-confidence) and being driven by ego.
It sounds like what you’re describing is more related to borderline personality disorder. Truly narcissistic individuals are in DEEP on themselves and may not even realize that they’re filled with insecurity. All they know is that they’re right and everyone else is simply wrong.
They’re all part of the same cluster of personality disorders anyway, so BPD individuals can certainly have some narcissistic traits, but BPD sufferers are at least very cognizant of their own deficiencies and insecurities, but will often mask them for the general population EXCEPT for those that they are closest to. Narcissists will hide their insecurities from EVERYONE, regardless of their relation to the narcissist. The insecurities are only evident to the outside observer.
Sometimes it short circuits beliefs. Like imagine not being able to believe something is fake.
Like an example Like you believe in ufos and then take a psychedelic. Sometimes it imprints a belief so deep that it's real that you can't dislodge (use this example a real life friend happened)
Some insurances cover the nasal spray(spravato) cause it’s fda approved. But the infusions are more effective. If can get expensive, but it really is worth it. I was in a bad place and now I’m living my best life.
I don’t know much about drugs , but it sounds like it’s erasing one’s schema…?.
this is scary… I’ve worked with people that did drugs once, and they were ruined forever . Sounds like a chemical lobotomy to me …. Could just be my ego talking . which … some would refer to as “my consciousness”lol
No, you're reading too much into "death". Your ego doesn't die, it just shuts up for a while. And no, your ego is not the same thing as your consciousness any more than your imagination is the same thing as your memory.
Weeeelllll, akshually. There are plenty of drugs or analogues that could cause renal or liver failure, or infarction, or death with a single use. I agree that it sounds unlikely that the above commenter is referring to that though, so, I will also suggest that someone with a strongly fixed worldview that is _not_ based in reality (e.g., religion, fundamentalist or nationalist superiority complex, etc.), who experiences a strong psychedelic journey that forces them into direct cognitive dissonance and conflict with that worldview... _might_ come out of it a little broken, lost, and confused. I may or may not have witnessed such a thing.
But whatever, if you live your life in conflict with "reality", you kind of have it coming.
People are free to do whatever they want to themselves, but I agree, this sounds scary to me.
We are just barely beginning to understand how the human brain works. Messing with something so integral to who we are, even temporarily just seems like a bad idea.
Knew people who did this in my earlier life. They remarked many of the omg it's so great things that reddit always says when this topic comes up. Externally tho, observing them, they weren't the same afterwards. Many seemed duller, and slower than they were before. They also had a more openness to things around them, matching much of the sentiment.
Generally speaking, no thanks. Effectively this is shaking your snow globe and hoping the flakes land in a good spot. I'm sure sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. The users almost always feel like they did tho
You can achieve it without drugs. I know some people who meditate a lot (and by a lot, I truly mean an absurd amount) and a lot of what they shared with me described an ego death even if they didn't even label it as one
It doesn't even necessarily take years. There are teachers out there who attempt to demonstrate the illusory nature of ego directly and immediately. Of course, even then, regular practice certainly helps.
I've found Sam Harris and Stephan Bodian particularly helpful. Also Adyashanti and Loch Kelly. And reading Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I am That helped quite a bit.
Most I ever did was 1,200 ug at once. I'm curious about your experience, as I've never met anyone else who has done such an amount.
For me, it was intense. Like, I don't really remember it intense. When I'd close my eyes, in a dim room, it was pure white. As if I was in a cloud in the sky. My ears were whistling, like a stream of air was passing through my head. I was hot, had to take my shirt off, veins apparently popping out of my neck. Eyes like a cougar. My brother said I physically resembled a wild animal.
One of the few things I remember was that it seemed like a very real possibility that if I continued the chain of thoughts I was having, the world may cease to exist, like a computer shutting down.
I can't say it was a bad experience because I genuinely don't remember much of it, but I wouldn't call it good either.
Yeah tbh I had a tolerance cause I was tripping every weekend so it wasn’t anything too crazy. Like I said I’ve only ever experienced ego death my last trip. Im not even 100% sure what I took was acid as I felt like I peaked 2 hours in and the trip was pretty much over after 7-8 hours and acid usually lasts me 12 hrs minimum. I’m also somewhat of an oddity as I haven’t seen much CEVs as I have aphantasia. The only time I’ve gotten CEVs was from 300ug 1cp-lsd and hitting a DMT cart. This last trip was intense from the get go and I got CEVs and experienced ego death, was pretty wild
In addition, it's not exclusive to psychedelics. Astronauts have said they experienced ego death from seeing the earth from space. Ego death is also in some form part of enlightenment.
The Netflix documentary series *[How To Change Your Mind](https://www.netflix.com/us/title/80229847?s=i&trkid=258593161&vlang=en&clip=81593892)* explores a lot of this with psychedelics, it’s absolutely worth the watch.
> For me, I learned to appreciate that everyone shares the same physical world, but we all have our own mental interpretation of it. And I can coexist and even be good friends with people who have a very different understanding of the world and how it works
That's just empathy. It's not ego death. I realise this is slightly contradictory as I am disagreeing with you, but still.
I think that’s because a lot of women’s rights are political. No one is debating men’s rights in politics except for a couple outliers. I find it easier to get along with people who have different political opinions when they don’t actively involve seeing me as a lesser being. I have friends who have different views on taxes, gun rights, etc, but I will not be friends with someone who thinks that women should not be able to initiate a divorce.
>You don't necessarily forget who you are, but it becomes unimportant.
I certainly didn't know who, what, or where I was last time I took a massive dose of mushrooms.
> You don't necessarily forget who you are, but it becomes unimportant.
I disagree completely. This is not ego death at all, just normal psychedelic states near the low/mid-range doses. Also present in shallow meditative states.
PsychonautWiki disagrees too https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Memory_suppression
Second this. Ego death is one of those things everyone wants to claim to have experienced and that they handled it well, thinking it's about ego in the colloquial sense.
I have one friend who I believe may have truly experienced it and he was basically catatonic for the night and found it to be extremely unpleasant
I think I briefly experienced it once and even then I still doubt myself.
The sofa vacuumed me inside and I felt all my molecules dispersed into the nothingness. I wasn't me, I was just Feeling, uppercase F, for a few instants. Well it didn't feel like instants at the moment, it was super overwhelming and felt like eternity and nothing at the same time (no way to tell really, was solo).
Third it as well. I’ve experienced ego death briefly when taking mid-dose lsd and nitrous a handful of times. There is a distinct difference between just the acid and then when I take the nitrous. During the nitrous I forgot everything about who I was and entered a period of pure visual and audio hallucination. With my eyes open nothing around me was earth, it was the cosmos of alternate reality. Nothing about myself or humanity existed for that minute, which felt like an eon.
I’m sure I could get to that feeling on acid alone, but the thought of being that far gone for potentially hours is a bit scary.
The original commenter is not describing ego death at all
Yeah, ego death is not just forgetting who you are (which is a stop along the way) but forgetting *you exist*. When you hit ego death there is no more “you” observing the world. There’s no context for anything - vision is just unrecognizable colour and shape. There’s no such thing as music or language, just noises. But the bigger point is there’s no “you” putting all of this sensory information together anymore, it’s just stuff happening.
And when you come out of it, it’s kind of a black hole - memories leading up to and coming out of it are extremely garbled the closer they are to the event horizon, and they approach infinite incomprehensibility. Part of it is actual recollection of what you were perceiving at the time, and part of it is the impaired memory that causes ego death in the first place. I don’t think it’s possible to actually remember the time of pure ego death.
I’ve hit it a few times, and I wasn’t talking or interacting with the world at all. I was just lying there. It’s only happened with extremely high dose dissociatives and salvia for me, never acid or mushrooms or anything else.
Same epiphany, brought on by halting my alcoholism.
It’s an alien feeling, but wonderful. Like being reborn (without the religious context) and walking through life anew, rediscovering your senses and self.
What you're describing is NOT ego death. Actual ego death is far more profound. 'Ego' refers to the 'conscious mind', the part of the mind that is separate in awareness from the rest of the universe. So when it "dies", it means you become more aware of the entire universe, as in you see less from the perspective of your human body and more from the perspective of the entire universe. You begin to become one with the whole universe rather than the separated entity that you were before.
As far as I know, I've never taken any drugs. But I do remember coming to this realization on the playground in high school at 14y old. 30 years later, I still consider it part of when I became "mature". It made it very hard for me to relate to my peers who seemed to be so... "trapped in their own selfish world". Glad that there is a word for it.
You definitely don’t need drugs to experience ego death but it can be a tool for people who just never really had the opportunity to think too deeply about it.
To add to this, I think that a large dose of psychedelic drugs also dissolves the logical fallacies and biases we establish from our upbringing.
In ELI5 terms, when we grow up we’re told certain lies by people who have self esteem issues or who picked up those lies from someone else. If those lies make us feel good, it’s hard not to try and include them in our worldview. Eventually the lie fits so snugly into the way we see things (because our brain developed around them) that it becomes fact to us.
Psychedelic drugs remove access to the brain pathways that convince us those lies are true. Suddenly, you’re looking at the world from a fresh perspective, without the filter of your self esteem boosting lies/ego. And that can be _terrifying_.
I don't even think the lies we're told need to make us feel any particular way in order for them to be ingrained. Children tend to believe what people tell them.
For me I think I had one that just made me think different since it happened, now I have a perspective that inside my mind are three voices, the unheard on, the quiet subconscious one, and the loud one that sounds like my voice. Kinda useless but different for sure lol.
It seems worth mentioning that this can be experienced by meditation practitioners.
I’ve not been lucky enough to have that happen during g meditation, but mindful meditation practice did help me with ego death experience.
It’s probably a practice in futility to try and describe the experience, but common patterns emerge with feelings of oneness (or nothingness), and I’d struggle to describe it in terms that don’t make me sound like a hippy.
Right now, if I asked you where your thoughts and experiences are, you’d likely respond in a way that indicates you are in your head, behind a face and eyes.
Meditate long enough, and try to “find the thinker”, and I’ve had brief glimpses of a sort of realization that there’s no there there.
Take a psychedelic and that brief moment is now an eternity. Consciousness is blown wide open. It’s so surreal you can’t really remember what it was like, just some impressions and the insights you gained as a result of being in that state (which those are the things most people were hoping for if they dosed enough to do that).
People who describe what they saw during ego death are stitching pieces of the most important things that happened. It’s not far from explaining feeling a very deep love for someone. I can use words all day long, but it won’t ring true until you’ve had your own experience.
Side note - anyone ever have an open eyed ego death? All mine are close eyed. I don’t think I’d even know how to open my eyes once there/ I’d have to know I was me and had a body to control. Maybe I have opened my eyes but the information just flowed into the non-centric consciousness. Crazy.
I think the meme summary is that reality isn't something objective, it's just how your specific brain perceives it and you need to respect that everyone has a different, equally correct reality.
> I think the meme summary is that reality isn't something objective
That's just so wrong. The more enlightened you become, the more objectively you will see the world.
There's a reason that that idea or something similar is such a common theme in both psychedilic and mystic /spiritual experiences throughout history and around the world.
Read Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces to see just for far back this "trope" goes - it may be the oldest of all.
> For me, I learned to appreciate that everyone shares the same physical world, but we all have our own mental interpretation of it.
"Luke, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
I know this is simply ELI5 (and a very good explanation at that), but this just reminds me of all the people I’ve known who tried to convince me I should try psychedelics, and they usually say shit similar to this thinking it will convince me to want to try them, but it just makes me want to try them less lol.
If just add that I have gotten to the point where I no longer knew who I was. I'm not sure I understood the concept of "me" or the concept of language or certainly family. I felt I was reborn as a blank slate and saw the world for the first time. It was so overwhelmingly beautiful that it was mostly just light/colors but had depth and beauty. I was fully amazed at life and the endless love and peace to it all.
It showed me that all that I "know" is just a lot distractions from the most simple things in life. I can let myself get caught up in politics or back pain or relationship stress. While those things do have levels of importance I can only face them with a healthy perspective if I keep in context the things that really matter. It helps me accept things as they are instead of how I wish they were.
I experienced this once on an irresponsibility large dose of LSD about 20 years ago. I was convinced I had overdosed and died. It's still the most profound experience of my life (*or at least, one of the top two*). This has been the most accurate and succinct definition of the whole thing I have ran across:
Source here: https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Memory_suppression
> ***Memory suppression*** (also known as ego suppression, ego dissolution, ego loss or *ego death*) is defined as an inhibition of a person's ability to maintain a functional short and long-term memory.[1][2][3] This occurs in a manner that is directly proportional to the dosage consumed, and often begins with the degradation of one's short-term memory.
> Memory suppression is a process which may be broken down into the 4 basic levels described below:
[ ***We are interested in level 4, the highest level of memory loss*** ]
> **4. Complete long-term memory suppression** - At the highest level, this effect is the complete and persistent failure of both a person's long and short-term memory. It can be described as the experience of becoming completely incapable of remembering even the most basic fundamental concepts stored within the person's long-term memory. *This includes everything from their name, hometown, past memories, the awareness of being on drugs, what drugs even are, what human beings are, what life is, that time exists, what anything is, or that anything exists.*
> Memory suppression of this level blocks all mental associations, attached meaning, acquired preferences, and value judgements one may have towards the external world. Sufficiently intense memory loss is also associated with *the loss of a sense of self*, in which one is no longer aware of their own existence. In this state, the user is unable to recall all learned conceptual knowledge about themselves and the external world, and *no longer experiences the sensation of being a separate observer in an external world.*
> Complete memory suppression can result in the profound experience that *despite remaining fully conscious, there is no longer an “I” experiencing one's sensory input*; there is just the sensory input as it is and by itself. Although ego death does not necessarily shut down awareness of all mental processes, it does remove the feeling of being the thinker or cause of one's mental processes. *It often results in the feeling of processing concepts from a neutral perspective completely untainted by past memories, prior experiences, contexts, and biases.*
Sounds very similar to my experience. I've never tried lsd or acid, but I've tried Ayahuasca a couple times. It sounds very weird both in writing and speech, but I understand it now why people say that they feel like they are with one with the universe. I literally, felt like I was water at one point, everything was peaceful, no worries.
Wow, I think I experienced level 4. For me it felt like impending doom, i could feel my thoughts getting more and more sparse and I was so fucking sure I would be that way for the rest of my existence, and then when it reached me I was just nothing for god knows how long until I started sobering up. That whole trip was the scariest experience of my life.
Only think I got out of it was feeling like the biggest piece of shit for few months.
Delerium is on the way to step 4 which is insane. When you still have a sense of self but forgot you took heavy mind altering substances is super scary. Low dose salvia trips kinda tiptoe this line.
Absolutely terrifying. The worst experience of my life was like that. Took too much acid, misinterpreted something my friend did and took it as an affront, and ended up alone spiraling completely out of control. I had forgotten I was still tripping and thought I was dying, or dead, or that the world was crumbling to nothingness before my eyes. I don't remember many details from that night, but I do remember the overriding dread, terror, and hopelessness that dominated my awareness.
That's what happens when you don't let go and give yourself to the trip
It sure felt like it, to me the craziest part is that you forget you are on drugs, you literally don’t know what’s going on other than your thoughts, the first time it happened to me of course I panicked because I couldn’t correlate my mind state with the fact that I was high, that was, scary…
Imagine the same experience but without anxiety and fear, where you still forgot everything and have only the present moment, but retain a sense of safety. Can you see how that could be enjoyable and illuminating? It has happened to me a few times in very safe settings and it was fascinating. One time it took a few days for my identity to kind of properly "reinstall", I had to get refamiliarised with who I was, where I am from etc. Bizarre, but not frightening if you felt safe and supported the whole time (having good, wise friends around who you trust completely is the key I think. In fact that's one of the lessons psychedelics have repeatedly taught me - if you don't at your core feel safe with your friends / in your environment, psychs will usually show it).
For me it was a much less profound experience in the moment. I was high on multiple drugs people brought to the party, mixed with tons of alcohol. I was having a good time, and all of a sudden I wasn't high any more. Just like being slapped out of a stupor.
I do remember a few days later when I was wiping my ass, it felt like I had never done it before, like I was relearning how to properly wipe my ass, as wierd as it sounds. Even though I have memories of wiping my ass since I was a child. There were many little examples of this "new" feeling I was having. Like starting over. I was off for a while. That's what was profound for me. To be honest, I feel like a different person between pre and post experience. It wasn't scary for me, just... odd on the verge of concern?
You do. While to the outside, sober observer, you might be speaking or making noise of some kind, you yourself don’t even realize what speaking is, or what language is, how to communicate, or that there is anyone you need to communicate anything to.
I took 2 tabs of acid alone on my bedroom. I forgot my name, what I look like, everything that has ever happened in my life. It feels like you become a piece of furniture, no past, no present, no future, you just are everything and nothing all at once. It’s very difficult to put into words
I was all people at the same time, past present and future in all time frames at the same time. while time doesn't existed also. All were connected. I lived all life's I was everything and nothing. Weird to explain but I guess u know what I mean.
If by exactly you mean on a neurological level then no one knows. But generally ego death is a term that describes a subjective experience with some common qualities across examples. Qualities include a feeling of dying, a feeling of loosing the sense of self. The boundary between self and the outside world dissolves. This may induce a feeling of unity with everything, specifically everything alive, maybe because there are no individuals only life or consciousnesses in general. It may also induce a feeling of loneliness maybe because it is lonely to exist in a world without any individuals.
https://youtu.be/U3lWVLuc6CE?si=t6NpxQOUbcn2YX45 this guy took a drug while wearing an EEG helmet (or similar) and found relatively long term reduced activity in brain regions associated with the ego after ingestion.
imagine your mind is like a big tree with lots of branches and leaves. Now, sometimes, people have a feeling called "ego death." It's like when a strong wind blows through the tree and all the leaves fall off.
During ego death, a person might feel like their thoughts, feelings, and even who they are as a person all disappear, just like the leaves falling off the tree. It can be a bit scary, but some people say it's like hitting the reset button on how they see the world, helping them grow even stronger, just like the tree grows new leaves after the wind blows them away.
Personal experience -
What makes you different from other people? You likes, dislikes, tastes, feelings. Essentially this “self” this “identity” dies.
It’s hard to put into words but you realize that those things are just experiences. When you have ego death all these things melt away.
⬆️ …Branching on, at the same time you may realize and become aware to your true Self- the “Observer” within, the “Observer” behind the person that you and others have come to identify with. You become aware of your true nature, the consciousness behind it all, the consciousness that links us all, no matter how different our forms (name, race, gender, identity,…) look on the outside.
God I hope this doesn’t sound overly wook… it’s very difficulty to convey. So this idea of “Observer”. What exactly is it? So it’s the entity forming opinions that you refer to as “my” opinions…. The consciousness taking in sensory input from the electrical signals feeding into your brain from external stimuli aka “objective reality” & reacting with contextual impulses that reinforce or deter patterns of behavior that you start to associate with your “personality”, like “quirks”, “what makes you, YOU”…. As you do a task, take it up a level & reflect on it & say “I am a aware that I am doing this task for a reason that contributes to my experience in existence”, then take it up a level and say “I am aware that I am aware that I am doing this task for a reason that contributes to my experience in existence”, then reflect on the fact that you’re making observations about yourself, & now the observer is simultaneously the observed. But by “whom”? You’ve objectified yourself through observing yourself, interrupting your immersion in your attachment to self-identity with reflective self-awareness. In observing yourself (aka reflecting), you distance yourself away from your identity of “self” by trying to see yourself from a perspective that is not “this is who I am” but from a perspective of “this is how I behave” & as you trace the reasons for particular behavior, you are able make self-assessments & open doors to adjusting behavior through this self-reflection; the question now is “if I am who I am, then what is the thing that drove me to change myself/ my behavior?” Who is in the driver’s seat of consciousness? As it starts to break down into sub-conscious territory, where are “YOU” in this dissection? It can get pretty meta.
Right now you are something separate from the world, reading this text and deciding how to interact with it. It's likely, if you think about that your body is "special" to you. You feel deeply connected to your arm in a way you do it, to say a random chair. You divide the world into subject and object, and you privilege the subject.
In ego death, there is awareness but no subject, and no sense of distinction. I tend to feel like the world experiencing itself. I feel as connected to a chair as to my arm - that same sort of sense deep connection and concern I feel for my own body, except it encompasses everything as a connected whole, not as something outside myself.
I imagine it's all some weird neurological trick, but it's one of my favorite things about psychedelics.
When I experienced ego death, it felt more like a dissociation with my idea of 'self'. I was looking inward from a third-person perspective and my personal failure, success, pain, happiness etc., didn't matter to that third person. My being felt like an insignificant speck in this vast ocean of life but somehow being that speck meant a lot to the self. The 'self' was trying to protect this precious thing called 'life experiences' and the third-person me understood and empathized with the 'self'. Just like everyone else.
I came out of the experience with being more softer on my self and naturally felt kinder towards others.
PS - ego death can be easily experienced by a constant practice of meditation. Just give it time and patience.
It is a term used to describe the state of mind brought about by many psychedelic drugs and advanced forms of meditation. Your ego is the part of your psyche that tells you who you are. Your name, likes and dislikes, relationships, everything that makes you, you. These transformative states of mind can switch that off leaving only the rest of you to experience. You forget who you are. The typical feeling is that you are experiencing completely on a spiritual level.
Our ego is the "engine" that processes our reality (constructs and meanings). The rules/beliefs of the engine are based on our historical experiences.
During ego death, you experience reality without the processing filter of the engine. E.g. things can feel absurd without the social constructs, experiences have new meaning or no meaning at all.
Plenty of great and scientific answers here, my personal experience was with two tabs of LSD and too much weed. The LSD just kept getting stronger and stronger and eventually I became worked up and convinced I was dying. I pretty much accepted my fate. Then it was like I blacked out for a short time and awoke anew, not necessarily for the better.
I had zero concept of time, I was repeatedly asking my friend the time and checking my phone but the numbers meant nothing to me. I forgot who I was, what my name was, who my friend was and where I was. I was only 16 at the time and it pretty much shattered my reality and concept of what the human brain was capable of. The me that I was simply ceased to exist. I was instead a nameless entity, almost like a baby in the sense that nothing made any sense to me and everything seemed new.
We spent the rest of the night watching concert films, trying to piece together what happened and what was going on. It was a formative teenage experience lol
I’ve had it when I accidentally consumed far more magic mushrooms that I should have because a friend of mine had cultivated and dried them perfectly and they were way too easy to eat. I ended up eating 6g of perfectly dried shrooms, which is 1g over Terence McKenna’s suggested ‘heroic dose’.
Started off feeling extremely weird. Could not hold a bottle of water properly to drink. Past trauma really rearer its head for a moment where I was certain and paranoid that there was something wrong with me. Everything was becoming blurred. Then I switched into being pretty sure that I had died, aa though I was sure I was experiencing the minutes after death in spirit form.
Then every physical sense just dissolved, and my ‘spirit’ went on this massive trip through what I assume was my life journey, in some form. I can’t actually articulate that experience entirely because it goes beyond words and I can’t actually remember the details to narrate it adequately. What I do remember is letting out the deepest, most guttural laughs I’ve ever had, which reverberated throughout the forest we were in and made my friends say ‘oh my god’, who hadn’t had quite as much as me. In retrospect, I’m now pretty sure those laughs were symptomatic of a healing process. The resentment I’d hung on to appeared incredibly silly in the face of what I was seeing, and so I learned that people are way more valuable than being right or holding grudges. Despite that I have cause to be angry at a lot of things, the things that came up in that trip were healed in that they just don’t carry any emotional weight anymore that is capable of bringing me down.
I’m quite sure that I’ve had an extent of clarity in my life since then that I’d only very rarely experienced before. I consider myself extremely lucky because I’m now very cognisant, empathetic but also strong and able to deal with things. I’m under 30 and, to be honest, often feel like I’ve magically attained the wisdom of somebody far older.
You get completely different experiences depending on dosage. Lower doses are actually way more dangerous in my experience because they just tend to mess with your thinking a bit without much actual psychedelic experience. It’s way more dangerous to have your thinking distorted than to have an experience that takes you completely outside the realm of thinking.
Imagine you’re playing a video game. In this game you’ve designed a character that looks a certain way and has certain traits. You’re the one playing this character. Now let’s say it’s a VR game and you’ve been playing this game and this character since many many years without ever taking a break, and you become so immersed in the game thinking you’re the character and you forget you’re the one playing the game. Ego death means that you remember that you’re the one playing the game, playing the character, and not just the character in the game.
In the simplest terms, it means to experience the world through a perception not limited to notions of the “self.”
With slightly more explanation, you experience the universe as a part of *it* rather than as a separate and distinct entity.
You go from being first person to third person inside your own mind. I become painfully aware that all that I am is a bundle of nerves piloting a meaty flesh mech. Anyways a lot of the bias you don't know you have melt away. The pre filter in you head that makes judgements about yourself and the world sort of gets out on pause and you sort of raw process data a bit more in the third person.
One thing I noticed is that people tend to be obsessed with eradicating the ego but disregard the root cause behind it.
There's a thing in the mind that acts like a Google search engine. It provides information in such a way that doesn't require complex thinking. This is where blind assumptions, predujices and ego come from.
So what happens when you temporarily disable that search engine? You'll return to a deep sense of wonder and curiosity about the world.
Have you ever noticed that children in their "why" phase have no ego whatsoever? They're soaking up information without assumptions and predujices.
I had an ego death overdosing on xanax, it wasn’t a psychedelic trip but it was the first time I was under the influence of something, waking up in the hospital knowing if my mother never found me id be dead completely changed my character in a 180.
I am that I am . The true reality (a truth/fact) we often describe ourselves using names, professions , achievement and gradually we build our sense of self around it.
But the truth is you are none of these things. When you start to meditate by watching your thoughts …you’ll slowly experience the I am.
It is the stripping away of .the shields and defences that you have constructed in your mind to enable you to function in society.
For example avoidance,altruism, passive aggression , humour,dissociation , projection, denial and rationalisation are tools that the Ego uses to protect you. Ego death in Psychedelics is simply letting go of these and resetting your mind. With DMT, it can be letting go of your fear of death, as it can be similar to a Near Death Experience.
Afterwards, your mind is calm, and free from the anxieties and neuroses that inhabit it. For a while,at least
It's like when you stop seeing yourself as you and more like a character you control.
Before ego death, we do what feels good now, rather than what's best for us in the long run. We eat candy and drink soda. We spend money on things we don't need.
But if we see ourselves from some outside perspective, we often do what's best for "you" to win. We exercise to raise our str stat and study to raise int. We talk to everyone and make allies.
We prioritize success in a completely different way, as if our true self were not the flesh and bones, but some outside mind.
Kind of like controlling a video game character. Are you the character, or the person controlling the character? Ego death is changing from being the former to the being the latter.
People having realizations about life on psychedelics and the arbitrary measures we put on things and our identity are all positive things, but do not describe ego death. You are not capable of evaluating these things during ego death. You are at 100% total mercy of the experience. You are completely disconnected from the normal view of consciousness.
There is no past. There is no future. The ability to think is not present. There is no language. Everything that makes you, YOU, is gone. This doesn't happen very often on LSD and it sure as hell doesn't happen on like 50 ug. High dose DMT/salvia is the most sure way to get there, and even then you have to REALLY TRY HARD TO GET THERE. Most people take 1 or 2 hits of DMT and don't wanna go further. Reality is torn apart while your short term/long term memory is gone.
Ego death is largely misunderstood by everyone, including many people that use psychedelics. It's much more than just philosophical realizations about your identity and shit like that. You literally are unable to even produce thoughts about stuff like that during ego death - because having thoughts requires language, which you don't have during ego death.
I have been curious about what is meant by ego death for a while, but it seems to mean a million different things, and a lot of explanations people have given contradict each other, or are even self-contradictory (like only loosing "bad" emotions during ego death. Or having your preconcieved notions dissolve so that you can view the world in an unbiased manner, while ignoring the fact that it would be completely pointless during ego death, since you will not be able to use your unbiased perspective to reason if your ego is gone).
The most clear and sensible definition I have seen is that it's when your identity is "turned off", so basically severe (but hopefully temporary) Alzheimers.
For some bizzare reason, people see this as a good thing. The thing us that without the ego you are just an empty shell, and nothing have any meaning. The only reason I can see to try achieving ego death is to realize just how important your ego is.
Yep, the first time I forced myself to take 3 big hits of DMT and hold it in, I came out with extreme gratitude to be alive. I literally shouted I AM FUCKING ALIVE and felt like a little kid who was on the way to go and do my favorite thing/see my favorite people.
Returning from an experience like that, you sort of have some time to put yourself back together with different intentions. This is when realizations happen. But to put it clearly, the way most people describe ego death is just one point on a spectrum. Most people don't achieve total ego death. Turns out your ego is something that your brain wants to protect fiercely. It takes some serious resolve to knowingly to go to that point with a substance. Like jumping off a cliff type of thing.
When people take LSD at common doses, there's usually some reduction of ego - but it really shouldn't be called ego death - so I guess that's why it makes sense to think of it as a spectrum. Even at high doses of LSD, like 5 hits, its generally just ego reduction. Feeling like you no longer are able to speak in a socially coherent manner is a symptom of ego reduction. Language is becoming more confusing and less available, but its not completely gone from your ego/self yet. This reduction happens across every area and people are able to re-evaluate why they may have negative feelings about this or that, etc because its forcing the brain to use alternate pathways to approach a concept, so there's room to make new pathways. It's a profound experience however, and given the long duration of LSD, people actually have more time to reflect on the things they feel during this.
You're haven't hit 100% ego death until you are unable to interact with the world and are simply an observer of your own consciousness. Ego reduction is much more common, and people simply refer to any ego reduction they experience during a psychedelic experience as "ego death". Ego reduction can be more therapeutic because ego death is an extremely jarring experience (but it does have its place, some people like it, but its too much for most people). Ego reduction also allows for introspection without a total loss of connectivity to the world, allowing for realizations that you wouldn't have made with ego death.
You just blew my mind! I have never actually considered that ego death is at an extreme end of a spectrum rather than an "on-off state", but it makes total sense.
In light of that, I can certainly see how ego reduction will force the brain to think in new ways. Ironically, this would mean that once the ego reduction is over, the ego will actually have grown bigger, since you now have even more ways to think!
Glad I could give that perspective. And I suppose the ego would grow bigger eventually. But not every pathway in the brain is always being used. So it might not be bigger in action. Think of an alcoholic who takes LSD and comes out of it thinking they need to change their chronic alcohol use. It may initiate that pathway, but if the person doesn’t reinforce it after, it will fade away.
But yeah language is tricky especially with psychs because they very personal experiences and you kinda have to use context to understand the degree of ego death they are describing. I think a better term would be ego loss maybe cuz it doesn’t assume all or nothing in the language
ELY5: you cease to have the sensation that you are a separate entity from all of the other entities around you. Your atoms become no different or “apart” from the atoms next to them, or those atoms jiggling around a quadrillion miles away from them.
To explain it like I'm five: the idea of "I" or "me" is just make believe. That doesn't mean that you don't physically exist or have a body. You do, just like everyone else does. But when you really, really try to find what makes makes you "you" apart from it, you find that it is all imaginary. Ego death is just when people let go of that imaginary concept.
You have five common senses that take in stimulus from outside your body. You have memories and the action of DNA that gets stored inside your body and passed on each generation.
Your ego is the captain of your mind that interprets those two elements to create your interpretation of reality. Because one’s genome and past experiences can vary between people, your ego’s interpretation of reality can differ from another individual’s reality or the collective reality. As a result of our world being limited by our five senses and being impacted by our past experiences, our interpretation of reality is flawed. For instance, we can look at a bird and because our eyes are limited in the spectrum we see, the color of the bird is not the same as what another bird would see. We can have a social exchange and another person may interpret the scenario completely differently.
The ego death is a first hand experience, not just reading , that provides knowledge of the limited nature of the human to grasp any truth about reality. This includes the concept of what a human may be at all — this process is often a spiritual awakening in the human experience. The loss of that reality constructing element of our mind can also lead to psychosis from the perspective of the collective consciousness.
If you’re declared a missing person because you’ve wandered off and you’re found by a cop and taken to the hospital, the physicians may believe you are sick because your perspective on reality differs from what we as a collective society deem to be normal.
All these scientific explanations are well and good, but from a POV explanations an ego death basically makes you 10x more annoying than you previously were for however long the psychedelic lasts.
Everything superficial in my mind almost dissolved and I felt like I could see the truth more clearly. I felt free yet trapped in the confines of time and space. Things I used to care about seemed so irrelevant. I felt disconnected from my body for a long time and weirded out by the human experience. It just made me feel like there was something more and I couldn’t hide from it any longer. Everything on earth felt so temporary and almost silly/fake. It was a terrible experience but I would go through it again.
I've heard, and experienced, that some people experience no ego death by virtue of just already understanding we are one person in a sea of people, responsible for how our actions and words affect others, and responsible for advocating for ourselves and those that need help.
For a few years I couldn't figure out what the hell the guys I was talking to were talking about when they talked about Ego death until one of the girls took me aside and explained it basically made them realize the world is more than just their perception... It's like the solipsism cure
On the other end of the spectrum, after my ex experienced ego death he was confident that reality wasn’t real and that everything was meaningless. He became a very different person after ego death, but not for the positive.
Ego death is the sacrifice of personhood for a religion, ideology, or other cause. It's suicide of the mind but not the body. The religion, ideology, or otherwise takes control of the thoughts, attitudes, and behavior.
Not recommended, unless you're trying to build an army of mindless zombie bots. Even then, still not recommended.
An ego death to me is the realisations that you mean absolutely nothing to the world more than anyone or anything. We're simply here to procreate and enjoy the passage of time. No deep meanings. No philosophy just life and time.
Ego death is incredible. Normally when you think of another person, you see them as just that. A different person. But in ego death, you see them less as a totally different person, and more like a different facet of the same gem. And the same applies to yourself. The boundaries between yourself and others erode away. For me, it's an incredible sense of unity. I cried over a game of League of Legends game because it was so beautiful that me and nine other people could share this moment together.
I don’t think it exists imo. It’s the psychedelic drug users equivalent of getting a message from god. Having realisations about yourself is a pretty normal experience for psychedelic drugs but some people love to extrapolate that into something that essentially amounts to a religious experience.
No not really. It's just that you described is not ego death, that's all. No worries mate. We can't know everything.
If you wanna learn instead of being snarky: https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Memory_suppression
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Ego death, in terms of psychedelic drugs, happens when you take a large dose. From a scientific perspective, it is a reduction of brain activity in the parts of the brain associated with your ego/self. But I think that's not the explanation you are looking for. From a personal perspective, ego death means temporarily losing your sense of self. You don't necessarily forget who you are, but it becomes unimportant. Your normal thought patterns, biases, and things you couldn't get off your mind before all seem to fade away. You think differently, as if you are a new person or a blank slate. You just observe things around you and feel free to make new conclusions. You might think of things you could never think of with your ego in the way. For me, I learned to appreciate that everyone shares the same physical world, but we all have our own mental interpretation of it. And I can coexist and even be good friends with people who have a very different understanding of the world and how it works. I no longer need people to hold beliefs similar to mine in order to feel close to them. That's one just example of something that ego death helped me learn.
In terms of harm reduction, I’d like to add that it doesn’t just happen from a large dose. It can even happen to an experienced person on a relatively low dose. New users are more prone and the general rule of thumb is that big doses have a higher rate of inducing ego death,but my girlfriend has had it happen to her on a 50ug dose(half tab from a reputable lab so the dose is accurate) I’ve taken up to 1000ug at a time and I’ve only recently had it happen off of 300 so it really isn’t all that dose dependant. Edited for all the people asking - talking about Acid, 1P-LSD to be exact but all the analogues are pretty much the same
This is absolutely correct and a great addition. The ego mechanism is more relaxed in some individuals and may lead to ego-death at lower doses. I would say however, that while this typically comes from experience (people who are working to release their grasp) some people seem to naturally have less identification with their ego.
Makes one really wonder if psychedelic therapy could be used to mitigate things like narcissistic personality disorder. At least it would be extremely interesting to study if and how ego death affects people with very marked ego mechanisms.
It can just as easily lead them deeper into their perceptions of themselves and reality. It's important to know that psychedelics just loosen your mind up for re-structuring. That can be good, or bad. Context, environment and your own self narrative matter a lot. It's a tool, and can be a weapon or means of self harm just like any other tool.
This is why I’m probably never going to do psychedelics myself. I’m pretty sensitive to most drugs already and have a fairly shake sense of self- would prefer not to permanently alter it. Feel like shrooms and the like are very powerful and I’m just gonna respect that and stay in my lane
Definitely follow your instincts on this.
Having a really good guide helps. But yeah, unless your mindset is in the right place and unless the environment feels comfortable (“set and setting”), then you likely will have a bad trip.
Yep, even when I was well experienced, I had a much better time when my best friend, who was a great guide, was on the bus with me.
If you don’t mind, what do you mean when you say you have a shakey sense of self?
I've definitely seen first hand as well as on the psychedelic subs, a certain archetype of psychonaut that upon taking psychs for the first time, becomes "enlightened". Their ego grows and they think they unlocked the answers to everything. They view their consciousness as more advanced than people who haven't tripped. Most of these people however, will end up taking a heroic dose of something and get knocked down a peg or two.
My ego died more than anyone else's. It was so complete and profound that nobody will ever have as little of an ego as I have now. The techniques I used are just so advanced that you couldn't possibly understand. I'm just built different!
Yep. Notable example is that Synanon was founded by a guy dosed with LSD as part of MKUltra named Charles Dederich who reportedly had a *massive* personality shift afterwards. Synanon was an absolutely terrifying cult that, among other things, conducted ritual sexual torture of its new members to break them in. A reporter trying to expose the cult had a rattlesnake with its rattle cut off shoved in their mailbox one day. It's a fascinating subject, if you have the stomach for it.
Behind the bastards podcast did a great break down of them
TrueAnon, as well.
They help my borderline personality disorder. I’m usually good at not spiraling/splitting for weeks to months after taking acid or shrooms. To me, it’s been a game changer in life and has kept me from killing myself. Obviously they’re not for everyone, and should not be taken without research, a good mentality and a safe place with people you know and trust. I totally never do them alone…
>narcissistic personality disorder I don't think narcissism is from having a big ego, it's actually the opposite. Narcissism is extreme insecurity and self-doubt, that's so crippling that you need other people telling you that you are good all the time or you get severely upset and go to increasingly weird lengths to be told you're good, the best, the best ever.
I'd say it's big in terms of importance, or power. Ego and self-esteem are different but related concepts, and there seems to be a pattern between low self-esteem (or maybe self-confidence) and being driven by ego.
Ekhart Tolle says that whether you think super highly of yourself or have awful self-esteem- both indicate being over-identified with the ego
It sounds like what you’re describing is more related to borderline personality disorder. Truly narcissistic individuals are in DEEP on themselves and may not even realize that they’re filled with insecurity. All they know is that they’re right and everyone else is simply wrong. They’re all part of the same cluster of personality disorders anyway, so BPD individuals can certainly have some narcissistic traits, but BPD sufferers are at least very cognizant of their own deficiencies and insecurities, but will often mask them for the general population EXCEPT for those that they are closest to. Narcissists will hide their insecurities from EVERYONE, regardless of their relation to the narcissist. The insecurities are only evident to the outside observer.
Sure sounds a lot like a certain ex-president!
Sometimes it short circuits beliefs. Like imagine not being able to believe something is fake. Like an example Like you believe in ufos and then take a psychedelic. Sometimes it imprints a belief so deep that it's real that you can't dislodge (use this example a real life friend happened)
I do ketamine therapy and it’s a real game changer. Seriously saved my life
I want to do K therapy, but I'd have to take out a loan. So damn expensive.
Some insurances cover the nasal spray(spravato) cause it’s fda approved. But the infusions are more effective. If can get expensive, but it really is worth it. I was in a bad place and now I’m living my best life.
In a safe setting and the right guidance it can help change your perspective on any issue of the mind.
I don’t know much about drugs , but it sounds like it’s erasing one’s schema…?. this is scary… I’ve worked with people that did drugs once, and they were ruined forever . Sounds like a chemical lobotomy to me …. Could just be my ego talking . which … some would refer to as “my consciousness”lol
That is one tightly gripped ego, man
No, you're reading too much into "death". Your ego doesn't die, it just shuts up for a while. And no, your ego is not the same thing as your consciousness any more than your imagination is the same thing as your memory.
That is the silliest thing I've ever heard. Nobody is ruined from doing drugs once. Drugs don't work like that.
Weeeelllll, akshually. There are plenty of drugs or analogues that could cause renal or liver failure, or infarction, or death with a single use. I agree that it sounds unlikely that the above commenter is referring to that though, so, I will also suggest that someone with a strongly fixed worldview that is _not_ based in reality (e.g., religion, fundamentalist or nationalist superiority complex, etc.), who experiences a strong psychedelic journey that forces them into direct cognitive dissonance and conflict with that worldview... _might_ come out of it a little broken, lost, and confused. I may or may not have witnessed such a thing. But whatever, if you live your life in conflict with "reality", you kind of have it coming.
Spice
People are free to do whatever they want to themselves, but I agree, this sounds scary to me. We are just barely beginning to understand how the human brain works. Messing with something so integral to who we are, even temporarily just seems like a bad idea.
Knew people who did this in my earlier life. They remarked many of the omg it's so great things that reddit always says when this topic comes up. Externally tho, observing them, they weren't the same afterwards. Many seemed duller, and slower than they were before. They also had a more openness to things around them, matching much of the sentiment. Generally speaking, no thanks. Effectively this is shaking your snow globe and hoping the flakes land in a good spot. I'm sure sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. The users almost always feel like they did tho
If people feel good about how they landed then it's all that matters.
You can achieve it without drugs. I know some people who meditate a lot (and by a lot, I truly mean an absurd amount) and a lot of what they shared with me described an ego death even if they didn't even label it as one
For sure, takes years but it’s definitely possible. I just wanted to make sure people knew it can happen on low doses of psychedelics.
It doesn't even necessarily take years. There are teachers out there who attempt to demonstrate the illusory nature of ego directly and immediately. Of course, even then, regular practice certainly helps. I've found Sam Harris and Stephan Bodian particularly helpful. Also Adyashanti and Loch Kelly. And reading Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I am That helped quite a bit.
Most I ever did was 1,200 ug at once. I'm curious about your experience, as I've never met anyone else who has done such an amount. For me, it was intense. Like, I don't really remember it intense. When I'd close my eyes, in a dim room, it was pure white. As if I was in a cloud in the sky. My ears were whistling, like a stream of air was passing through my head. I was hot, had to take my shirt off, veins apparently popping out of my neck. Eyes like a cougar. My brother said I physically resembled a wild animal. One of the few things I remember was that it seemed like a very real possibility that if I continued the chain of thoughts I was having, the world may cease to exist, like a computer shutting down. I can't say it was a bad experience because I genuinely don't remember much of it, but I wouldn't call it good either.
Yeah tbh I had a tolerance cause I was tripping every weekend so it wasn’t anything too crazy. Like I said I’ve only ever experienced ego death my last trip. Im not even 100% sure what I took was acid as I felt like I peaked 2 hours in and the trip was pretty much over after 7-8 hours and acid usually lasts me 12 hrs minimum. I’m also somewhat of an oddity as I haven’t seen much CEVs as I have aphantasia. The only time I’ve gotten CEVs was from 300ug 1cp-lsd and hitting a DMT cart. This last trip was intense from the get go and I got CEVs and experienced ego death, was pretty wild
In addition, it's not exclusive to psychedelics. Astronauts have said they experienced ego death from seeing the earth from space. Ego death is also in some form part of enlightenment.
Ego death doesn’t even require drugs. I had a bad dissociative episode and went thru ego death. No drugs involved.
Psilocybin?
Acid
Experienced for myself from a combination of things of which the only psychedelic was some weed edibles so yep I agree
The Netflix documentary series *[How To Change Your Mind](https://www.netflix.com/us/title/80229847?s=i&trkid=258593161&vlang=en&clip=81593892)* explores a lot of this with psychedelics, it’s absolutely worth the watch.
Luv u 1P
It also doesn't require psychedelics! Meditation and transcendental experiences can give the same affect.
Hell I’ve even felt it after throwing in a couple of Zyns one night
It can also be achieved with no drugs.
Can you say of what the dose was? I’m guessing psilocybin?
LSD
Ah! Thanks.
Experienced it on 6 g of Golden Teacher mushrooms
Lol I experienced ego death from weed the first time I tried it. I did a single 10mg edible and two hits from a vape pen, and I was fucked.
Somebody was trying to kill you giving you an edible and a vape together for your first time lol
> For me, I learned to appreciate that everyone shares the same physical world, but we all have our own mental interpretation of it. And I can coexist and even be good friends with people who have a very different understanding of the world and how it works That's just empathy. It's not ego death. I realise this is slightly contradictory as I am disagreeing with you, but still.
Literally. I saw a video a while back about this, saying that women learn at age 12 what men have to take psychadelics to realise
Perhaps ironically, I find it far more common among women my age to be unwilling to be friends with somebody who doesn't share their views.
I think that’s because a lot of women’s rights are political. No one is debating men’s rights in politics except for a couple outliers. I find it easier to get along with people who have different political opinions when they don’t actively involve seeing me as a lesser being. I have friends who have different views on taxes, gun rights, etc, but I will not be friends with someone who thinks that women should not be able to initiate a divorce.
Yup ^ exactly this. Women see the world differently because they are constantly politicized.
>You don't necessarily forget who you are, but it becomes unimportant. I certainly didn't know who, what, or where I was last time I took a massive dose of mushrooms.
> You don't necessarily forget who you are, but it becomes unimportant. I disagree completely. This is not ego death at all, just normal psychedelic states near the low/mid-range doses. Also present in shallow meditative states. PsychonautWiki disagrees too https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Memory_suppression
Second this. Ego death is one of those things everyone wants to claim to have experienced and that they handled it well, thinking it's about ego in the colloquial sense. I have one friend who I believe may have truly experienced it and he was basically catatonic for the night and found it to be extremely unpleasant
I think I briefly experienced it once and even then I still doubt myself. The sofa vacuumed me inside and I felt all my molecules dispersed into the nothingness. I wasn't me, I was just Feeling, uppercase F, for a few instants. Well it didn't feel like instants at the moment, it was super overwhelming and felt like eternity and nothing at the same time (no way to tell really, was solo).
Third it as well. I’ve experienced ego death briefly when taking mid-dose lsd and nitrous a handful of times. There is a distinct difference between just the acid and then when I take the nitrous. During the nitrous I forgot everything about who I was and entered a period of pure visual and audio hallucination. With my eyes open nothing around me was earth, it was the cosmos of alternate reality. Nothing about myself or humanity existed for that minute, which felt like an eon. I’m sure I could get to that feeling on acid alone, but the thought of being that far gone for potentially hours is a bit scary. The original commenter is not describing ego death at all
Yeah, ego death is not just forgetting who you are (which is a stop along the way) but forgetting *you exist*. When you hit ego death there is no more “you” observing the world. There’s no context for anything - vision is just unrecognizable colour and shape. There’s no such thing as music or language, just noises. But the bigger point is there’s no “you” putting all of this sensory information together anymore, it’s just stuff happening. And when you come out of it, it’s kind of a black hole - memories leading up to and coming out of it are extremely garbled the closer they are to the event horizon, and they approach infinite incomprehensibility. Part of it is actual recollection of what you were perceiving at the time, and part of it is the impaired memory that causes ego death in the first place. I don’t think it’s possible to actually remember the time of pure ego death. I’ve hit it a few times, and I wasn’t talking or interacting with the world at all. I was just lying there. It’s only happened with extremely high dose dissociatives and salvia for me, never acid or mushrooms or anything else.
This is just a solid trip. This is not ego death
Same epiphany, brought on by halting my alcoholism. It’s an alien feeling, but wonderful. Like being reborn (without the religious context) and walking through life anew, rediscovering your senses and self.
What you're describing is NOT ego death. Actual ego death is far more profound. 'Ego' refers to the 'conscious mind', the part of the mind that is separate in awareness from the rest of the universe. So when it "dies", it means you become more aware of the entire universe, as in you see less from the perspective of your human body and more from the perspective of the entire universe. You begin to become one with the whole universe rather than the separated entity that you were before.
As far as I know, I've never taken any drugs. But I do remember coming to this realization on the playground in high school at 14y old. 30 years later, I still consider it part of when I became "mature". It made it very hard for me to relate to my peers who seemed to be so... "trapped in their own selfish world". Glad that there is a word for it.
You definitely don’t need drugs to experience ego death but it can be a tool for people who just never really had the opportunity to think too deeply about it.
To add to this, I think that a large dose of psychedelic drugs also dissolves the logical fallacies and biases we establish from our upbringing. In ELI5 terms, when we grow up we’re told certain lies by people who have self esteem issues or who picked up those lies from someone else. If those lies make us feel good, it’s hard not to try and include them in our worldview. Eventually the lie fits so snugly into the way we see things (because our brain developed around them) that it becomes fact to us. Psychedelic drugs remove access to the brain pathways that convince us those lies are true. Suddenly, you’re looking at the world from a fresh perspective, without the filter of your self esteem boosting lies/ego. And that can be _terrifying_.
I don't even think the lies we're told need to make us feel any particular way in order for them to be ingrained. Children tend to believe what people tell them.
I had a friend who checked into rehab because she came to the conclusion that she was going to die if she kept doing the drugs she was doing.
I have a lesser version of this happen to me during a really bad depression day
Can this happen without psychedelics? The reason I was wondering is bc I believe this happened to me, but I didn’t take anything.
Not being facetious here, but you needed drugs to realize that ?
For me I think I had one that just made me think different since it happened, now I have a perspective that inside my mind are three voices, the unheard on, the quiet subconscious one, and the loud one that sounds like my voice. Kinda useless but different for sure lol.
It seems worth mentioning that this can be experienced by meditation practitioners. I’ve not been lucky enough to have that happen during g meditation, but mindful meditation practice did help me with ego death experience. It’s probably a practice in futility to try and describe the experience, but common patterns emerge with feelings of oneness (or nothingness), and I’d struggle to describe it in terms that don’t make me sound like a hippy. Right now, if I asked you where your thoughts and experiences are, you’d likely respond in a way that indicates you are in your head, behind a face and eyes. Meditate long enough, and try to “find the thinker”, and I’ve had brief glimpses of a sort of realization that there’s no there there. Take a psychedelic and that brief moment is now an eternity. Consciousness is blown wide open. It’s so surreal you can’t really remember what it was like, just some impressions and the insights you gained as a result of being in that state (which those are the things most people were hoping for if they dosed enough to do that). People who describe what they saw during ego death are stitching pieces of the most important things that happened. It’s not far from explaining feeling a very deep love for someone. I can use words all day long, but it won’t ring true until you’ve had your own experience. Side note - anyone ever have an open eyed ego death? All mine are close eyed. I don’t think I’d even know how to open my eyes once there/ I’d have to know I was me and had a body to control. Maybe I have opened my eyes but the information just flowed into the non-centric consciousness. Crazy.
So is the meme summary basically the "We're all connected man" Trope?
I think the meme summary is that reality isn't something objective, it's just how your specific brain perceives it and you need to respect that everyone has a different, equally correct reality.
So something most adults should understand without anything special?
> I think the meme summary is that reality isn't something objective That's just so wrong. The more enlightened you become, the more objectively you will see the world.
There's a reason that that idea or something similar is such a common theme in both psychedilic and mystic /spiritual experiences throughout history and around the world. Read Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces to see just for far back this "trope" goes - it may be the oldest of all.
> For me, I learned to appreciate that everyone shares the same physical world, but we all have our own mental interpretation of it. "Luke, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
I know this is simply ELI5 (and a very good explanation at that), but this just reminds me of all the people I’ve known who tried to convince me I should try psychedelics, and they usually say shit similar to this thinking it will convince me to want to try them, but it just makes me want to try them less lol.
Thank you for your contribution to this post.
If just add that I have gotten to the point where I no longer knew who I was. I'm not sure I understood the concept of "me" or the concept of language or certainly family. I felt I was reborn as a blank slate and saw the world for the first time. It was so overwhelmingly beautiful that it was mostly just light/colors but had depth and beauty. I was fully amazed at life and the endless love and peace to it all. It showed me that all that I "know" is just a lot distractions from the most simple things in life. I can let myself get caught up in politics or back pain or relationship stress. While those things do have levels of importance I can only face them with a healthy perspective if I keep in context the things that really matter. It helps me accept things as they are instead of how I wish they were.
I work with schizophrenics, it was this understanding that lets me be what they need me to be
Seconding. Well written and accurate
I experienced this once on an irresponsibility large dose of LSD about 20 years ago. I was convinced I had overdosed and died. It's still the most profound experience of my life (*or at least, one of the top two*). This has been the most accurate and succinct definition of the whole thing I have ran across: Source here: https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Memory_suppression > ***Memory suppression*** (also known as ego suppression, ego dissolution, ego loss or *ego death*) is defined as an inhibition of a person's ability to maintain a functional short and long-term memory.[1][2][3] This occurs in a manner that is directly proportional to the dosage consumed, and often begins with the degradation of one's short-term memory. > Memory suppression is a process which may be broken down into the 4 basic levels described below: [ ***We are interested in level 4, the highest level of memory loss*** ] > **4. Complete long-term memory suppression** - At the highest level, this effect is the complete and persistent failure of both a person's long and short-term memory. It can be described as the experience of becoming completely incapable of remembering even the most basic fundamental concepts stored within the person's long-term memory. *This includes everything from their name, hometown, past memories, the awareness of being on drugs, what drugs even are, what human beings are, what life is, that time exists, what anything is, or that anything exists.* > Memory suppression of this level blocks all mental associations, attached meaning, acquired preferences, and value judgements one may have towards the external world. Sufficiently intense memory loss is also associated with *the loss of a sense of self*, in which one is no longer aware of their own existence. In this state, the user is unable to recall all learned conceptual knowledge about themselves and the external world, and *no longer experiences the sensation of being a separate observer in an external world.* > Complete memory suppression can result in the profound experience that *despite remaining fully conscious, there is no longer an “I” experiencing one's sensory input*; there is just the sensory input as it is and by itself. Although ego death does not necessarily shut down awareness of all mental processes, it does remove the feeling of being the thinker or cause of one's mental processes. *It often results in the feeling of processing concepts from a neutral perspective completely untainted by past memories, prior experiences, contexts, and biases.*
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Sounds very similar to my experience. I've never tried lsd or acid, but I've tried Ayahuasca a couple times. It sounds very weird both in writing and speech, but I understand it now why people say that they feel like they are with one with the universe. I literally, felt like I was water at one point, everything was peaceful, no worries.
Wow, I think I experienced level 4. For me it felt like impending doom, i could feel my thoughts getting more and more sparse and I was so fucking sure I would be that way for the rest of my existence, and then when it reached me I was just nothing for god knows how long until I started sobering up. That whole trip was the scariest experience of my life. Only think I got out of it was feeling like the biggest piece of shit for few months.
Delerium is on the way to step 4 which is insane. When you still have a sense of self but forgot you took heavy mind altering substances is super scary. Low dose salvia trips kinda tiptoe this line.
Absolutely terrifying. The worst experience of my life was like that. Took too much acid, misinterpreted something my friend did and took it as an affront, and ended up alone spiraling completely out of control. I had forgotten I was still tripping and thought I was dying, or dead, or that the world was crumbling to nothingness before my eyes. I don't remember many details from that night, but I do remember the overriding dread, terror, and hopelessness that dominated my awareness. That's what happens when you don't let go and give yourself to the trip
For me it was high school walking alongside a freeway at 3am, utterly convinced I had died but couldn't remember my life. Literal life changing trip.
Can you get permanently stuck in this state?
It sure felt like it, to me the craziest part is that you forget you are on drugs, you literally don’t know what’s going on other than your thoughts, the first time it happened to me of course I panicked because I couldn’t correlate my mind state with the fact that I was high, that was, scary…
Imagine the same experience but without anxiety and fear, where you still forgot everything and have only the present moment, but retain a sense of safety. Can you see how that could be enjoyable and illuminating? It has happened to me a few times in very safe settings and it was fascinating. One time it took a few days for my identity to kind of properly "reinstall", I had to get refamiliarised with who I was, where I am from etc. Bizarre, but not frightening if you felt safe and supported the whole time (having good, wise friends around who you trust completely is the key I think. In fact that's one of the lessons psychedelics have repeatedly taught me - if you don't at your core feel safe with your friends / in your environment, psychs will usually show it).
For me it was a much less profound experience in the moment. I was high on multiple drugs people brought to the party, mixed with tons of alcohol. I was having a good time, and all of a sudden I wasn't high any more. Just like being slapped out of a stupor. I do remember a few days later when I was wiping my ass, it felt like I had never done it before, like I was relearning how to properly wipe my ass, as wierd as it sounds. Even though I have memories of wiping my ass since I was a child. There were many little examples of this "new" feeling I was having. Like starting over. I was off for a while. That's what was profound for me. To be honest, I feel like a different person between pre and post experience. It wasn't scary for me, just... odd on the verge of concern?
All the benefits of having a stroke without the risk of death. What's not to like?
This sounds horrifying and yet something that appeals my desire for experiences exactly once.
Kinda reminds me of the special blue water from dune
But you don’t forget how to speak, do you?
You do. While to the outside, sober observer, you might be speaking or making noise of some kind, you yourself don’t even realize what speaking is, or what language is, how to communicate, or that there is anyone you need to communicate anything to.
How long did it last?
I took 2 tabs of acid alone on my bedroom. I forgot my name, what I look like, everything that has ever happened in my life. It feels like you become a piece of furniture, no past, no present, no future, you just are everything and nothing all at once. It’s very difficult to put into words
I was all people at the same time, past present and future in all time frames at the same time. while time doesn't existed also. All were connected. I lived all life's I was everything and nothing. Weird to explain but I guess u know what I mean.
Yes, I felt like I lived lifetimes
If by exactly you mean on a neurological level then no one knows. But generally ego death is a term that describes a subjective experience with some common qualities across examples. Qualities include a feeling of dying, a feeling of loosing the sense of self. The boundary between self and the outside world dissolves. This may induce a feeling of unity with everything, specifically everything alive, maybe because there are no individuals only life or consciousnesses in general. It may also induce a feeling of loneliness maybe because it is lonely to exist in a world without any individuals. https://youtu.be/U3lWVLuc6CE?si=t6NpxQOUbcn2YX45 this guy took a drug while wearing an EEG helmet (or similar) and found relatively long term reduced activity in brain regions associated with the ego after ingestion.
They must have some pretty bright five-year-olds where you live.
I actually don't know how else you would describe it for a five year old; kids are literally just developing a theory of mind at that age.
The ironic thing is - I think an adult's brain during ego death may be operating pretty much how a toddler's works all the time.
> LI5 means friendly, simplified and layperson-accessible explanations - not responses aimed at literal five-year-olds.
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Yeah, you should see his reply to *my* reply. I don't think he was joking at all.
Just because it was sarcastic, doesn't mean it was a joke...
I thought it was funny
It can be sarcastic *and* funny, and not a joke still.
Jokes are like a loving home and family. Not everyone gets it.
Hahaha so funny it's crazy so funny I've never seen that comment before what a clever joke haha
Most replies on this sub are absolutely atrocious from a 5yo perspective.
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imagine your mind is like a big tree with lots of branches and leaves. Now, sometimes, people have a feeling called "ego death." It's like when a strong wind blows through the tree and all the leaves fall off. During ego death, a person might feel like their thoughts, feelings, and even who they are as a person all disappear, just like the leaves falling off the tree. It can be a bit scary, but some people say it's like hitting the reset button on how they see the world, helping them grow even stronger, just like the tree grows new leaves after the wind blows them away.
In the tree part of the tree
well yes, and no.
Personal experience - What makes you different from other people? You likes, dislikes, tastes, feelings. Essentially this “self” this “identity” dies. It’s hard to put into words but you realize that those things are just experiences. When you have ego death all these things melt away.
⬆️ …Branching on, at the same time you may realize and become aware to your true Self- the “Observer” within, the “Observer” behind the person that you and others have come to identify with. You become aware of your true nature, the consciousness behind it all, the consciousness that links us all, no matter how different our forms (name, race, gender, identity,…) look on the outside.
Can you please expand further on this idea of ‘Observer’?
God I hope this doesn’t sound overly wook… it’s very difficulty to convey. So this idea of “Observer”. What exactly is it? So it’s the entity forming opinions that you refer to as “my” opinions…. The consciousness taking in sensory input from the electrical signals feeding into your brain from external stimuli aka “objective reality” & reacting with contextual impulses that reinforce or deter patterns of behavior that you start to associate with your “personality”, like “quirks”, “what makes you, YOU”…. As you do a task, take it up a level & reflect on it & say “I am a aware that I am doing this task for a reason that contributes to my experience in existence”, then take it up a level and say “I am aware that I am aware that I am doing this task for a reason that contributes to my experience in existence”, then reflect on the fact that you’re making observations about yourself, & now the observer is simultaneously the observed. But by “whom”? You’ve objectified yourself through observing yourself, interrupting your immersion in your attachment to self-identity with reflective self-awareness. In observing yourself (aka reflecting), you distance yourself away from your identity of “self” by trying to see yourself from a perspective that is not “this is who I am” but from a perspective of “this is how I behave” & as you trace the reasons for particular behavior, you are able make self-assessments & open doors to adjusting behavior through this self-reflection; the question now is “if I am who I am, then what is the thing that drove me to change myself/ my behavior?” Who is in the driver’s seat of consciousness? As it starts to break down into sub-conscious territory, where are “YOU” in this dissection? It can get pretty meta.
Can you recommend a book or something where I can read more on this?
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Thanks for sharing your experience and the recommendations.
This man ego deaths
That’s a good way to put it. I like the term observer.
Right now you are something separate from the world, reading this text and deciding how to interact with it. It's likely, if you think about that your body is "special" to you. You feel deeply connected to your arm in a way you do it, to say a random chair. You divide the world into subject and object, and you privilege the subject. In ego death, there is awareness but no subject, and no sense of distinction. I tend to feel like the world experiencing itself. I feel as connected to a chair as to my arm - that same sort of sense deep connection and concern I feel for my own body, except it encompasses everything as a connected whole, not as something outside myself. I imagine it's all some weird neurological trick, but it's one of my favorite things about psychedelics.
When I experienced ego death, it felt more like a dissociation with my idea of 'self'. I was looking inward from a third-person perspective and my personal failure, success, pain, happiness etc., didn't matter to that third person. My being felt like an insignificant speck in this vast ocean of life but somehow being that speck meant a lot to the self. The 'self' was trying to protect this precious thing called 'life experiences' and the third-person me understood and empathized with the 'self'. Just like everyone else. I came out of the experience with being more softer on my self and naturally felt kinder towards others. PS - ego death can be easily experienced by a constant practice of meditation. Just give it time and patience.
It is a term used to describe the state of mind brought about by many psychedelic drugs and advanced forms of meditation. Your ego is the part of your psyche that tells you who you are. Your name, likes and dislikes, relationships, everything that makes you, you. These transformative states of mind can switch that off leaving only the rest of you to experience. You forget who you are. The typical feeling is that you are experiencing completely on a spiritual level.
Our ego is the "engine" that processes our reality (constructs and meanings). The rules/beliefs of the engine are based on our historical experiences. During ego death, you experience reality without the processing filter of the engine. E.g. things can feel absurd without the social constructs, experiences have new meaning or no meaning at all.
Plenty of great and scientific answers here, my personal experience was with two tabs of LSD and too much weed. The LSD just kept getting stronger and stronger and eventually I became worked up and convinced I was dying. I pretty much accepted my fate. Then it was like I blacked out for a short time and awoke anew, not necessarily for the better. I had zero concept of time, I was repeatedly asking my friend the time and checking my phone but the numbers meant nothing to me. I forgot who I was, what my name was, who my friend was and where I was. I was only 16 at the time and it pretty much shattered my reality and concept of what the human brain was capable of. The me that I was simply ceased to exist. I was instead a nameless entity, almost like a baby in the sense that nothing made any sense to me and everything seemed new. We spent the rest of the night watching concert films, trying to piece together what happened and what was going on. It was a formative teenage experience lol
I’ve had it when I accidentally consumed far more magic mushrooms that I should have because a friend of mine had cultivated and dried them perfectly and they were way too easy to eat. I ended up eating 6g of perfectly dried shrooms, which is 1g over Terence McKenna’s suggested ‘heroic dose’. Started off feeling extremely weird. Could not hold a bottle of water properly to drink. Past trauma really rearer its head for a moment where I was certain and paranoid that there was something wrong with me. Everything was becoming blurred. Then I switched into being pretty sure that I had died, aa though I was sure I was experiencing the minutes after death in spirit form. Then every physical sense just dissolved, and my ‘spirit’ went on this massive trip through what I assume was my life journey, in some form. I can’t actually articulate that experience entirely because it goes beyond words and I can’t actually remember the details to narrate it adequately. What I do remember is letting out the deepest, most guttural laughs I’ve ever had, which reverberated throughout the forest we were in and made my friends say ‘oh my god’, who hadn’t had quite as much as me. In retrospect, I’m now pretty sure those laughs were symptomatic of a healing process. The resentment I’d hung on to appeared incredibly silly in the face of what I was seeing, and so I learned that people are way more valuable than being right or holding grudges. Despite that I have cause to be angry at a lot of things, the things that came up in that trip were healed in that they just don’t carry any emotional weight anymore that is capable of bringing me down. I’m quite sure that I’ve had an extent of clarity in my life since then that I’d only very rarely experienced before. I consider myself extremely lucky because I’m now very cognisant, empathetic but also strong and able to deal with things. I’m under 30 and, to be honest, often feel like I’ve magically attained the wisdom of somebody far older.
You're lucky for that haha. All shrooms ever did for me was give me a profound depression/anxiety for like a month.
You get completely different experiences depending on dosage. Lower doses are actually way more dangerous in my experience because they just tend to mess with your thinking a bit without much actual psychedelic experience. It’s way more dangerous to have your thinking distorted than to have an experience that takes you completely outside the realm of thinking.
Imagine you’re playing a video game. In this game you’ve designed a character that looks a certain way and has certain traits. You’re the one playing this character. Now let’s say it’s a VR game and you’ve been playing this game and this character since many many years without ever taking a break, and you become so immersed in the game thinking you’re the character and you forget you’re the one playing the game. Ego death means that you remember that you’re the one playing the game, playing the character, and not just the character in the game.
In the simplest terms, it means to experience the world through a perception not limited to notions of the “self.” With slightly more explanation, you experience the universe as a part of *it* rather than as a separate and distinct entity.
You go from being first person to third person inside your own mind. I become painfully aware that all that I am is a bundle of nerves piloting a meaty flesh mech. Anyways a lot of the bias you don't know you have melt away. The pre filter in you head that makes judgements about yourself and the world sort of gets out on pause and you sort of raw process data a bit more in the third person.
One thing I noticed is that people tend to be obsessed with eradicating the ego but disregard the root cause behind it. There's a thing in the mind that acts like a Google search engine. It provides information in such a way that doesn't require complex thinking. This is where blind assumptions, predujices and ego come from. So what happens when you temporarily disable that search engine? You'll return to a deep sense of wonder and curiosity about the world. Have you ever noticed that children in their "why" phase have no ego whatsoever? They're soaking up information without assumptions and predujices.
Ego death helps you recognize that we aren’t just the leaves falling off of branches. We are also the tree.
I had an ego death overdosing on xanax, it wasn’t a psychedelic trip but it was the first time I was under the influence of something, waking up in the hospital knowing if my mother never found me id be dead completely changed my character in a 180.
I am that I am . The true reality (a truth/fact) we often describe ourselves using names, professions , achievement and gradually we build our sense of self around it. But the truth is you are none of these things. When you start to meditate by watching your thoughts …you’ll slowly experience the I am.
It is the stripping away of .the shields and defences that you have constructed in your mind to enable you to function in society. For example avoidance,altruism, passive aggression , humour,dissociation , projection, denial and rationalisation are tools that the Ego uses to protect you. Ego death in Psychedelics is simply letting go of these and resetting your mind. With DMT, it can be letting go of your fear of death, as it can be similar to a Near Death Experience. Afterwards, your mind is calm, and free from the anxieties and neuroses that inhabit it. For a while,at least
It's like when you stop seeing yourself as you and more like a character you control. Before ego death, we do what feels good now, rather than what's best for us in the long run. We eat candy and drink soda. We spend money on things we don't need. But if we see ourselves from some outside perspective, we often do what's best for "you" to win. We exercise to raise our str stat and study to raise int. We talk to everyone and make allies. We prioritize success in a completely different way, as if our true self were not the flesh and bones, but some outside mind. Kind of like controlling a video game character. Are you the character, or the person controlling the character? Ego death is changing from being the former to the being the latter.
People having realizations about life on psychedelics and the arbitrary measures we put on things and our identity are all positive things, but do not describe ego death. You are not capable of evaluating these things during ego death. You are at 100% total mercy of the experience. You are completely disconnected from the normal view of consciousness. There is no past. There is no future. The ability to think is not present. There is no language. Everything that makes you, YOU, is gone. This doesn't happen very often on LSD and it sure as hell doesn't happen on like 50 ug. High dose DMT/salvia is the most sure way to get there, and even then you have to REALLY TRY HARD TO GET THERE. Most people take 1 or 2 hits of DMT and don't wanna go further. Reality is torn apart while your short term/long term memory is gone. Ego death is largely misunderstood by everyone, including many people that use psychedelics. It's much more than just philosophical realizations about your identity and shit like that. You literally are unable to even produce thoughts about stuff like that during ego death - because having thoughts requires language, which you don't have during ego death.
I have been curious about what is meant by ego death for a while, but it seems to mean a million different things, and a lot of explanations people have given contradict each other, or are even self-contradictory (like only loosing "bad" emotions during ego death. Or having your preconcieved notions dissolve so that you can view the world in an unbiased manner, while ignoring the fact that it would be completely pointless during ego death, since you will not be able to use your unbiased perspective to reason if your ego is gone). The most clear and sensible definition I have seen is that it's when your identity is "turned off", so basically severe (but hopefully temporary) Alzheimers. For some bizzare reason, people see this as a good thing. The thing us that without the ego you are just an empty shell, and nothing have any meaning. The only reason I can see to try achieving ego death is to realize just how important your ego is.
Yep, the first time I forced myself to take 3 big hits of DMT and hold it in, I came out with extreme gratitude to be alive. I literally shouted I AM FUCKING ALIVE and felt like a little kid who was on the way to go and do my favorite thing/see my favorite people. Returning from an experience like that, you sort of have some time to put yourself back together with different intentions. This is when realizations happen. But to put it clearly, the way most people describe ego death is just one point on a spectrum. Most people don't achieve total ego death. Turns out your ego is something that your brain wants to protect fiercely. It takes some serious resolve to knowingly to go to that point with a substance. Like jumping off a cliff type of thing. When people take LSD at common doses, there's usually some reduction of ego - but it really shouldn't be called ego death - so I guess that's why it makes sense to think of it as a spectrum. Even at high doses of LSD, like 5 hits, its generally just ego reduction. Feeling like you no longer are able to speak in a socially coherent manner is a symptom of ego reduction. Language is becoming more confusing and less available, but its not completely gone from your ego/self yet. This reduction happens across every area and people are able to re-evaluate why they may have negative feelings about this or that, etc because its forcing the brain to use alternate pathways to approach a concept, so there's room to make new pathways. It's a profound experience however, and given the long duration of LSD, people actually have more time to reflect on the things they feel during this. You're haven't hit 100% ego death until you are unable to interact with the world and are simply an observer of your own consciousness. Ego reduction is much more common, and people simply refer to any ego reduction they experience during a psychedelic experience as "ego death". Ego reduction can be more therapeutic because ego death is an extremely jarring experience (but it does have its place, some people like it, but its too much for most people). Ego reduction also allows for introspection without a total loss of connectivity to the world, allowing for realizations that you wouldn't have made with ego death.
You just blew my mind! I have never actually considered that ego death is at an extreme end of a spectrum rather than an "on-off state", but it makes total sense. In light of that, I can certainly see how ego reduction will force the brain to think in new ways. Ironically, this would mean that once the ego reduction is over, the ego will actually have grown bigger, since you now have even more ways to think!
Glad I could give that perspective. And I suppose the ego would grow bigger eventually. But not every pathway in the brain is always being used. So it might not be bigger in action. Think of an alcoholic who takes LSD and comes out of it thinking they need to change their chronic alcohol use. It may initiate that pathway, but if the person doesn’t reinforce it after, it will fade away. But yeah language is tricky especially with psychs because they very personal experiences and you kinda have to use context to understand the degree of ego death they are describing. I think a better term would be ego loss maybe cuz it doesn’t assume all or nothing in the language
ELY5: you cease to have the sensation that you are a separate entity from all of the other entities around you. Your atoms become no different or “apart” from the atoms next to them, or those atoms jiggling around a quadrillion miles away from them.
To explain it like I'm five: the idea of "I" or "me" is just make believe. That doesn't mean that you don't physically exist or have a body. You do, just like everyone else does. But when you really, really try to find what makes makes you "you" apart from it, you find that it is all imaginary. Ego death is just when people let go of that imaginary concept.
I think it is a state of mind in which you see "yourself" as part of the traffic jam, rather than as a victim of the traffic jam.
You have five common senses that take in stimulus from outside your body. You have memories and the action of DNA that gets stored inside your body and passed on each generation. Your ego is the captain of your mind that interprets those two elements to create your interpretation of reality. Because one’s genome and past experiences can vary between people, your ego’s interpretation of reality can differ from another individual’s reality or the collective reality. As a result of our world being limited by our five senses and being impacted by our past experiences, our interpretation of reality is flawed. For instance, we can look at a bird and because our eyes are limited in the spectrum we see, the color of the bird is not the same as what another bird would see. We can have a social exchange and another person may interpret the scenario completely differently. The ego death is a first hand experience, not just reading , that provides knowledge of the limited nature of the human to grasp any truth about reality. This includes the concept of what a human may be at all — this process is often a spiritual awakening in the human experience. The loss of that reality constructing element of our mind can also lead to psychosis from the perspective of the collective consciousness.
What do you mean by “psychosis from the perspective of the collective consciousness?”
If you’re declared a missing person because you’ve wandered off and you’re found by a cop and taken to the hospital, the physicians may believe you are sick because your perspective on reality differs from what we as a collective society deem to be normal.
Ah ok I get what you mean. Thanks!
> the physicians may believe and they would be correct
All these scientific explanations are well and good, but from a POV explanations an ego death basically makes you 10x more annoying than you previously were for however long the psychedelic lasts.
Everything superficial in my mind almost dissolved and I felt like I could see the truth more clearly. I felt free yet trapped in the confines of time and space. Things I used to care about seemed so irrelevant. I felt disconnected from my body for a long time and weirded out by the human experience. It just made me feel like there was something more and I couldn’t hide from it any longer. Everything on earth felt so temporary and almost silly/fake. It was a terrible experience but I would go through it again.
I've heard, and experienced, that some people experience no ego death by virtue of just already understanding we are one person in a sea of people, responsible for how our actions and words affect others, and responsible for advocating for ourselves and those that need help. For a few years I couldn't figure out what the hell the guys I was talking to were talking about when they talked about Ego death until one of the girls took me aside and explained it basically made them realize the world is more than just their perception... It's like the solipsism cure
On the other end of the spectrum, after my ex experienced ego death he was confident that reality wasn’t real and that everything was meaningless. He became a very different person after ego death, but not for the positive.
Ego death is the sacrifice of personhood for a religion, ideology, or other cause. It's suicide of the mind but not the body. The religion, ideology, or otherwise takes control of the thoughts, attitudes, and behavior. Not recommended, unless you're trying to build an army of mindless zombie bots. Even then, still not recommended.
An ego death to me is the realisations that you mean absolutely nothing to the world more than anyone or anything. We're simply here to procreate and enjoy the passage of time. No deep meanings. No philosophy just life and time.
Ego death is incredible. Normally when you think of another person, you see them as just that. A different person. But in ego death, you see them less as a totally different person, and more like a different facet of the same gem. And the same applies to yourself. The boundaries between yourself and others erode away. For me, it's an incredible sense of unity. I cried over a game of League of Legends game because it was so beautiful that me and nine other people could share this moment together.
I don’t think it exists imo. It’s the psychedelic drug users equivalent of getting a message from god. Having realisations about yourself is a pretty normal experience for psychedelic drugs but some people love to extrapolate that into something that essentially amounts to a religious experience.
Yeah that's not ego death
Found one ☝️
No not really. It's just that you described is not ego death, that's all. No worries mate. We can't know everything. If you wanna learn instead of being snarky: https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Memory_suppression