Psychedelic enlightenment, share your experience

While enlightenment might be a strong word and pejorative, I hope you will get what I mean.


I feel like 2-3 first trips were the most amazing. At that time I was purely focused on the experience, scared and amazed. After it, I was filled with happiness, while I was never religious or spiritual, I have to say these experiences were the most spiritual ones I had. And the only ones.

I have finally found my way around the world, I was perfectly happy, It seemed like there are no problems. World just seem to look different, like brighter, more sharp. I have the best memories from this period.

Was it all delusion? And even if it was, does it matter? Wouldn't it be great to go through such experience anyway? Well, not really. Now I feel different. Not perfect. Even though I feel like all I have received everything I should from psychedelics, I still keep taking them occassionally. Breakthrough experience doesn't pretty much happen anymore. All the latest trips seem like they don't matter.

Maybe it is suppossed to be this way. You can't be manic happy all the life. Maybe I have realised everything I needed to and now I should just try to live life as happily as possibile?

Meanwhile, I have been diagnosed with bipolar and depression, been taking plenty of medicines and I've spend first year on uni smoking pot in my dorm.

Maybe person going through psychedelic enlightenment can behave to bipolar person going through similar experience (without help of substances) and thats why many people are diagnosed bipolar?

This looks is interesting aswell:
Notice how bipolar experience can be similar to breakthrough psychedelic experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=herQr9JcMJ8"]2. Is Bipolar Mania Spiritual Enlightenment? 1 of 2 - YouTube

 

to me the Grateful Dead Steal Your Face icon ..

represents the polarity between emotions. good/bad and thats whats in between.

psychedelics certainly helped me avoid the harmful psychological institutional mental health system. however Im still involved in mental health care with discernment ..

 

there are many forms of enlightenment. spiritual, sexual, etc.. to me it's like a candle light in the darkness of my mind. goes out easily. but when lit , it helps me find a way through the darkness

 

I found that video interesting and I can certainly see how it corresponds with psychedelic experiences but I think some of it is kind of reaching in connecting it with bipolar disorder. For instance, how it gravitates to the phenomena of "peak experiences" as if it were strictly intended to relate to Bipolar Disorder, which is not the origin at all for that phenomena.

Also the video seems to imply that the symptoms that are diagnosed as bipolar disorder are some of the same as those in enlightenment, therefore enlightenment equals insanity. I'm not sure that reasoning is all that sound. The idea that enlightenment equals insanity is not a popular view held by science and psychology I believe. After all, Timothy Leary was a Harvard Psychologist before he went on to proselytize the wonders of LSD to the public. Even before Leary, Carl Jung one of the most notable figures of Modern Psychology pulled a lot from Eastern spiritual texts for his work.

I think there is more of a view of psychedelic enlightenment and perhaps other forms of enlightenment as kind of fluffy, not as rigid or viewed as precise in the same way in which we come to a lot of scientific knowledge. So most that attempt to explain the phenomena usually reside in the realm of pseudoscience. You mentioning how the spirituality of your psychedelic experiences diminished after a few uses kind of illustrates how these experiences in many ways are not subject to the same rigorous repeatability and verification as other experiences may be.


I find I can still get really spiritual experiences from psychedelics, however unlike my initial experiences I can seemingly use them for recreational, analytical, as well as other purposes easier now as well.