Someone You Know Has Done This

Maybe They Came Back Quieter

Maybe They Said It Was The Most Important Experience Of Their Life

Maybe They Cried For Three Hours And Could Not Tell You Why

Except That It Felt Like Relief

You Wanted To Know What Actually Happened

Not The Mystical Version

The Neurological One

🐦‍🔥Back To The Psychedelics🐦‍🔥

The Answer Most People Give Is Curiosity

But The Research Suggests Something Deeper Is Operating Underneath That

Surveys Conducted By Johns Hopkins Researchers Found That

Most People Who Use Classic Psychedelics Are Not Seeking A High In The Traditional Sense

They Are Seeking A Shift

A Break From A Mind That Will Not Stop Running The Same Loop

Depression

Grief

Addiction

The Persistent Feeling That Something Is Wrong And They Cannot Locate What

In A 2006 Landmark Study

Roland Griffiths And His Team At Johns Hopkins Administered

Psilocybin To Volunteers With No Previous Psychedelic Experience

Two Thirds Of Them Rated The Experience Among The Five Most Meaningful Of Their Entire Lives

One Third Called It The Single Most Meaningful Experience They Had Ever Had

That Is Not A Recreational Drug Report

That Is A Person Describing Something That Reorganized Them At A Fundamental Level

The Question Science Spent Forty Years Avoiding Finally Became Unavoidable

What Is This Doing To The Brain

Classic Psychedelics, Including Psilocybin

LSD, And DMT, Are Agonists At The Serotonin 2A Receptor

Known As 5 HT2A

These Receptors Are Densely Concentrated In The Prefrontal Cortex

The Region Of The Brain Most Involved In Self Reflection

Abstract Reasoning, And Emotional Regulation

When A Psychedelic Binds To These Receptors

It Does Not Simply Flood The Brain With Serotonin The Way An Antidepressant Does

It Triggers A Cascade Of Downstream Effects

That Temporarily Restructure How The Brain's Regions Communicate With Each Other

Brain Regions That Normally Operate In Isolation Begin Talking To Each Other

Visual Processing Areas Connect To Emotional Memory Centers

Sensory Networks Merge With Abstract Thought

The Internal Architecture Of The Mind

Which Spends Most Of Its Life Running In Predictable And Well Worn Channels

Suddenly Has Access To Routes It Does Not Normally Use

Neuroscientist Robin Carhart Harris At Imperial College London

Describes This As A State Of Increased Entropy

The Brain Temporarily Moves Into A Higher State Of Disorder

More Like A Child's Brain Than An Adult's

More Open

More Flexible

More Capable Of Forming Connections That The Adult Mind Has Long Since Filtered Out

There Is A System In The Brain Called The Default Mode Network

The DMN

It Is Active When You Are Not Focused On An External Task

When You Are Ruminating

Daydreaming

Planning, Or Running The Internal Monologue That Most People Experience As Their Sense Of Self

The DMN Is Where The Story Of Who You Are Lives

Your Autobiographical Memory

Your Self Criticism

Your Interpretation Of Every Social Interaction You Have Ever Had

It Is Also The Network That Becomes Hyperactive In People With Depression

The Loop Running Too Hot

Too Long, Producing The Same Thoughts In The Same Configurations With No Exit

Psychedelics Suppress The Default Mode Network Dramatically

The Brain Scans Are Stark

The Regions That Normally Dominate Self Referential

Processing Go Quiet And When They Go Quiet

What People Describe Is Not The Absence Of Experience

It Is The Opposite

With The Narrator Offline

Something Else Becomes Audible

Psychologists Call It Ego Dissolution

The Boundary Between Self And World Becomes Unclear

The Internal Voice Goes Silent

What Remains Is Awareness Without The Usual Center

William James Described This Exact State In 1902 Without An MRI Machine

He Called It A Mystical Experience And Identified Four Consistent Qualities Across All Reports

Ineffability

The Experience Cannot Be Fully Described In Language

Noetic Quality

It Feels Like Direct Knowledge, Not Emotion

Transiency. It Does Not Last

Passivity

The Ego Does Not Produce It. It Gets Out Of The Way And The Experience Arrives

The Neuroscience Is Now Mapping Exactly What James Documented By Observation Alone

The Effects Of A Psychedelic Experience Do Not End When The Compound Clears The System

Psilocybin Has Been Shown To Increase The Expression Of BDNF

Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor

A Protein Responsible For The Growth

Maintenance, And Survival Of Neurons

Sometimes Called Miracle Gro For The Brain

Dendritic Spines

The Small Structural Projections That Allow Neurons To Form New Connections

Grow Denser In The Days Following Exposure

The Brain Becomes Temporarily More Plastic

More Capable Of Learning

Of Breaking Entrenched Patterns

Of Forming New Associations In Place Of Old Ones

This Is Why Researchers Focus So Heavily On What They Call The Therapeutic Window

The Period Following A Psychedelic Experience Is Not Simply A Recovery Period

It Is A Window Of Heightened Biological Readiness For Change

If The Person Does The Psychological Work In That Window

The Brain Is Structurally Primed To Receive It

A 2020 Study Published In JAMA Psychiatry

Found That Two Sessions Of Psilocybin Assisted Therapy

Produced Rapid And Substantial Decreases In Depression And Anxiety

In People With Major Depressive Disorder

Effects That Were Still Measurable Four Weeks Later

A Single Experience Producing Weeks Of Relief In A Condition

That Had Resisted Years Of Conventional Treatment

That Is Not Placebo Noise

That Is A Brain That Got A Window And Used It

Psychedelics Are Not New

Indigenous Cultures Across Every Continent Have Used Plant Based Psychedelic

Compounds For Thousands Of Years In Ceremonial And Healing Contexts

What Is New Is The Scientific Language To Describe What Those Cultures Already Understood Empirically

That The Mind Has Layers Most People Never Access

That Suffering Is Often Not A Chemical Deficiency But A Structural One

The Same Thought Pathways Running In The Same Directions

Reinforced Over Decades

Until Change Becomes Almost Biologically Impossible

Psychedelics Do Not Heal By Adding Something

They Heal By Temporarily Removing The Structure That Was Making Change Impossible

The Default Mode Network Quiets

The Rigid Hierarchy Dissolves

The Brain

For A Few Hours

Runs Like It Did When It Was Young Enough To Rewire Itself

And Sometimes That Window Is Enough

Not Because The Drug Did The Work

Because The Brain Finally Had The Space To Do What It Had Been Trying To Do The Entire Time