Oh man. I dunno. The ruminating, perseverating intellectual mediator shut down for a few hours and I just walked around a forest in awe.
And the "peak" was something like a direct experience of the interconnectedness of everything. Sounds cliche/trite/sophomoric out of the context of the experience, but it was a hugely powerful. And I'm moved thinking about it now, over a decade later.
I dunno why that experience helped so tremendously with anxiety. But it did.
I'm guessing context was important. I was living in a little cabin on a wooded island in Maine and was meditating a fuckton.
That shit was all positive.
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I also have experience with something like a "bad trip". I once ate a massive dose of thc edibles and went on a journey through some sort of solipsistic hellscape (like instead of "everything is one" it was "I'm the only one...and I'm all good and all evil, all joy and all suffering"...so I'm quite familiar with the terror. I kinda think both experiences are useful.
Naturally, I interpret the bad trip as pure delusion and the good trip as a revelation of the function of consciousness.
I'm planning on visiting Vancouver BC for a guided high-dose session sometime in the near future. With follow-up "integration" work.
That ^ sort of context is what I was thinking might help. I wouldn't pop 5 grams and hope for bliss.
I'm not familiar with the research on micro-dosing (and I haven't tried it). But, seems low-risk* and possibly useful
* Regarding legal risk: If - in the context of 100,000 Americans overdosing on opiates last year - law enforcement deems mushrooms worth their time enforcing....then the world just needs to fucking burn. Realistically, it's just not (and shouldn't be) an enforcement priority.