Psilocybin Breakthrough

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Psilocybin Breakthrough

praise the Lord, I saw the light

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 9, 2025

Until this weekend, I was feeling like a weirdo when it came to psilocybin mushrooms. I had read all those reports about dramatic user experiences, including fractal visions and cosmic insights, and yet the results of my own personal consumption of Psilocybe cubensis over the past year had been both modest and subtle. My first experience on psilocybin powder in Oregon was definitely promising, but the benefits consisted mainly of the extremely positive mindset that I manifested on the evening after my blindfolded journey. The "trip" itself was underwhelming, at least when I consider it now in retrospect, though at the time I was excited by the hints of color and pattern that emerged as I reclined on a couch and listened to Mahler over a Bluetooth headset. I was on a low introductory dose of psilocybin at the time, so merely to experience anything at all boded well for the three upcoming sessions at higher doses that had been scheduled for that week. I was especially looking forward to guided session number three, when I was to partake of 5 mg. of psilocybin powder, a dosage that I was told had seldom failed to evoke profound experiences.

I should mention here that I was taking a large daily dose of an antidepressant at the time, namely Effexor ¹ , and so both I and my facilitator were unsure of my biochemical ability to obtain dramatic results from psilocybin use. Indeed, I am still on Effexor, though now at significantly reduced dosages in line with a tapering schedule that I have formulated myself in conjunction with a compounding pharmacist and my psychiatrist. That, of course, is a story in itself, since I had to move heaven and earth to create a sensible tapering strategy for Effexor, given that pharmaceutical companies do not produce low doses of the drug. As a result, the tapering patient is typically obliged to "count pill beads" in order to reduce dosage gradually in a manner that makes psychological common sense -- wherefore it is little wonder that recidivism rates for those attempting to get off the drug are notoriously high. Counting those nearly microscopic pill beads is not an easy task, and yet this is currently the default method for getting off such drugs. The patient is obliged to become a compounding pharmacist in petto, a fact which speaks volumes about the anti-patient nature of modern psychiatry.

With that important disclaimer out of the way, I return to my story.

Session two was slightly disappointing, since the dosage of psilocybin powder had been doubled and yet the experience remained more or less the same. Session three was downright frustrating, since the dosage was now officially categorized as "high," and yet my experience was actually inferior to that of the previous two sessions. I blamed this at the time on my use of Effexor; however, subsequent experience suggests that my usage of antidepressants ² was not the only factor responsible for my substandard experience. The very format of the session may have been to blame, at least in part. To see how this might be so, one has to understand the insights gained from my first breakthrough psilocybin experience, which occurred this past weekend. And so let us now turn to the details of that trip. By explaining what worked for me, psychedelically speaking, I hope to shed light on the shortcomings of my previous attempts at self-transcendence.

The first fact to observe was that I was perfectly ready for a trip this past Friday. I mean to say that I had plenty of time to take a journey and I was motivated to take one. My mind (for a wonder) was not focused on other things in my life. I was not currently obsessing about money or problematic friendships or even the petty politics of condo committees. I was in the perfect 'place' for using psilocybin. Of course, I was also in the perfect place, psychologically speaking, when I first used psilocybin in Oregon, so this one factor cannot account for the shortcomings of my earliest experiences. It does suggest, however, why some users might report "bad trips," for I have found that impactful psilocybin journeys keep one's mind very busy, a fact that I will expand upon below, and it is easy to see how this could be upsetting for those who are not in the mood to be reflective and introspective. The moral for me was: If you are not patient and open to ten hours or more of experiential learning - yes, ten hours or more - choose another time for your psilocybin journey.

This brings me to the first unexpected result of my breakthrough experience on a high dose of psilocybin mushrooms. Although there were eventually to be visions, such manifestations were totally absent during the first six hours of my "trip." This was perhaps, in part, due to the fact that my experience began early in the evening, and I was not disposed to wear an eye mask at the time. I was still wide awake and so I chose to watch concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic during the beginning of my "journey," with both eyes and ears wide open. I think this suggests one reason why I was frustrated by the high-dose experience in Oregon: in that scenario, I was obliged to remain on a sofa, like an invalid, at 12:30 in the afternoon, wearing an eye mask and under the constant surveillance of a board-certified facilitator. I wanted to go out into the hallway and look at the psychedelic paintings on the wall, but I was not even allowed to do that. I was instead encouraged to remain masked and wait for the visions to occur. This setup began to feel so oppressive that I actually felt like I had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom. I knew this was not the case, but it was nevertheless the impression that I had.

After sharing my feelings with the facilitator, he provided me with an iPad. So I took off my eye mask and started browsing the Web. I was now able to escape the four walls of my "prison." For this particular iPad seemed to be remarkably full of exciting content, especially about tourist sites in Oregon, and I took the liveliest interest in almost every single photo-illustrated article on the subject, an interest level that I could not have had in a "sober" state. My feeling at the time was like, "Wow! Look at these redwoods, these calderas and these waterfalls! To think that there are such things in the world!" I could not get enough of the suddenly wonderful-looking state of Oregon. In fact, the session timed out while I was browsing, and the facilitator had to remind me that I was now "free to go." I was no longer being held for ransom! While exiting the room, I tried to back-pedal, or at least qualify, my criticism of the session format, for I did not want it to appear that I was criticizing my facilitator personally. He had mandatory state guidelines that he had to follow. But I clearly saw that the use of couches and eye masks had real shortcomings, at least during certain stages of the psilocybin experience.

This became clear in my most recent journey. After consuming a handful of mushrooms, I watched with rapt attention as the Berlin Philharmonic performed three orchestral masterpieces in their entirety: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and the first and second symphonies of Mahler. That's almost 200 straight minutes' worth of content. I occasionally thought to myself that I might want to change the channel, but I never came close to actually doing so. Both the audio and the video were just too captivating. There was something touching about seeing this talented subset of humanity coming together on stage in a united effort to communicate the ineffable message of music, especially the conductors, whose every gesture seemed to express truths that could never be adequately expressed in words and yet were viscerally "understood," at least to some degree, by literally everybody. Occasionally, I would close my eyes during the performances, hoping to see geometrically inspired visions, but no such luck.

After the triumphal end of Mahler's second symphony at about 9:00 p.m., I retired to my office, where I spent an extremely productive three hours or so working on my audio production of "The Country Wife," a Restoration comedy by 18th-century playwright William Wycherley, for which I was employing synthetic voices. I was clearly "zoned in" and so I was able to perform the sometimes tedious mixing and recording work both efficiently and rapidly. I still was experiencing no visions, but by now my mind was simply focused on work and I was no longer obsessing about the precise nature of my psilocybin journey. I just wanted to make the most of my high motivation level so that I could share my play with the world as soon as possible. It was well after midnight before I finally decided to retire for the night. I would have stayed up even longer to finish the job, had it not turned out that the play was a ridiculously long one, with an ultimate run time, at least in my synthetic rendition, in excess of three hours!

Prior to retiring, I made a pitstop at the bathroom to relieve my bladder. I would ordinarily spare my readers such details, but in this case, that mundane event has special relevance. For no sooner had I taken the customary step of closing my eyes, when I was confronted with just the sort of warmly lit geometric visions about which one reads in the user reports of psychonauts. I was finally experiencing those much bally-hooed visions, six full hours after ingesting magic mushrooms! Me, Ballard, a bigtime user of antidepressants was having a real psychedelic trip! At last, Poor Rudolph could join in all the reindeer games! These visions were chiefly of a deep pulsating green and their globular appearance morphed as I watched them - or rather as I experienced them, for these visions existed only when my eyes were shut. It was wonderful to see that my antidepressant use had not entirely barred me from accessing mind-altering states after all, a fear that I had entertained ever since I began learning about the potential benefits of psychedelics through the work of researchers like James Fadiman and Stanislav Grof.

Of course, exotic visions are one thing and breakthrough paradigms are another. The question still remained: would my latest psilocybin journey inspire me with new and productive ways of thinking about the world?

The answer, I am happy to report, appears to be yes, as should become apparent in reading the remainder of my trip account below.

When I hopped into bed and shut my eyes, the visions previously experienced now became more elaborate and multicolored. They were all inner-lit with a kind of pulsating energy and sometimes faintly outlined by a thin line of what appeared to be rainbow-colored pixels. The overall experience was exceedingly pleasant and yet completely unfocused. It was indiscriminate bliss. It soon occurred to me that, if I intended to learn anything from this joy ride, I needed to somehow guide the journey with relevant thoughts. So thinking, I reached for my smart phone and began playing an audio recording of the sermons of Meister Eckhart, the famous 14th-century German mystic whom Schopenhauer recommends for the purpose of understanding ultimate realities. Eckhart preaches how to transcend the corporal body and to find one's joy in merging (indeed, in actually becoming) God him, her, or itself. His advice was to give me the hints that I needed at that moment to disassociate the ongoing ecstasy from the corporal realm and to ground it instead in the spiritual, in what the Hindus might refer to as the Crown Shakra, or sahasrara.

"You must understand then," says the mystic, "that our whole perfection, our entire happiness, will lie in traversing and transcending all creatureliness, all time and all limitation and getting into the cause which is causeless."

This admonition took on special significance under the influence of psilocybin and served to focus my thoughts on the transcendent nature of my experience, as did the following additional apothegms by the German mystic:

"We have to transcend the little, discard the adventitious and perceive God one."

"The soul must pass beyond, she must transcend, all creatures before she can find God."

And finally...

"The soul that makes this transcendental passage enters the universal peace. She is God as he is in himself."

I found my mind rapidly processing each separate insight, with the multicolored visions serving as a kind of bejeweled incarnation of the goal of conceptual purity toward which the words seemed to be shepherding me.

This is why I said above that the psychonaut should be in a patient mindset before setting out on a psilocybin journey, especially at high doses, because the mind goes into overdrive on such occasions, at least to the extent that my own experience was typical. Indeed, my thoughts were racing at this time, though it was by no means an unpleasant experience. I was, however, vaguely aware that it was getting rather late, so at around 3 A.M. I decided to drink a wine cooler in the hopes of settling down and going to sleep. It was interesting to note that the beverage that I subsequently consumed went down like plain water: I mean to say there was not the slightest hint of the mild inebriation that normally accompanies the downing of such a beverage. It was as if the psilocybin was determined to keep me thinking clearly and had contravened the effects of the alcohol for this purpose. That said, I did fall asleep shortly after consuming the wine cooler, so the ploy seemed to have the desired effect, especially as I then slept soundly until 10 A.M.

Upon awakening, I found that I had lost my mental superpowers of the night before. My brain's processing speed had returned to that of an average mortal. And just in time, too, because the trip was something of an intellectual workout for all its enjoyability. And yet the experience had lasted longer than I might have imagined, a full nine hours, in fact, with the most visually dramatic portion of the trip occurring during the last third of that time span. For me, such a result was a huge success, for it proved that I was capable of psychedelic epiphanies in spite of my use of antidepressants. Of course, I did not so much learn new things as I had former beliefs strengthened by a kind of experiential proof of their validity, as, for instance, my belief in the ultimate nature of love and unity. But I now better understood why such substances have been called "teachers" by indigenous peoples, and I now saw, at least in principle, how trips of this kind could leave the psychonaut with the understanding that they need to solve practical problems in their daily life, as for instance when the teenaged Paul Stamets was able to overcome his stuttering problem after one afternoon of mushroom use.

I conclude this discussion of my latest (and greatest) psilocybin experience with the closing lines of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Although originally written as a love poem, it expresses the ineffability of my dream visions and describes them as well as any secular words might, especially when the "thee" of the poem is taken to be God, and/or the Kantian noumena, and/or the ultimate source of all being. The verses below admirably intimate the incapacity of words to express such transcendent concepts.

"And I! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,
I cannot write- I cannot speak or think-
Alas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling,
This standing motionless upon the golden
Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams.
Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
Upon the left, and all the way along,
Amid empurpled vapors, far away
To where the prospect terminates- thee only."

AFTERWORD

Psilocybin! Just imagine, a natural substance that increases one's thought capacity and lets one think outside the box! In a sane world, such substances would be studied for their ability to treat Alzheimer's ³ and dementia patients. If psilocybin can increase thought capacity in healthy minds, it is common sense to investigate its use on behalf of the cognitively impaired. Unfortunately, we live in the age of a Drug War, a time in which common sense is hard to come by. We westerners would rather demonize psychoactive substances than understand them and use them wisely on behalf of a suffering humanity.

Immanuel Kant

Schopenhauer

Notes:

1: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
2: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
3: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)

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Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."

Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.

There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.

New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.

Drug war pundits need to stop using the word "snorts" when it comes to cocaine. We "take" our "meds," and yet we "snort" cocaine, just like a pig. That is NOT neutral language, folks!

The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.

There is something wrong with a country that thinks it can decide what human beings around the world are allowed to ingest.

The drug war is a scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.

The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.

The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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Psilocybin Breakthrough

praise the Lord, I saw the light

Immanuel Kant

Schopenhauer

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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