As a young 20-ish who've never partaken in any kind of drugs. Does anyone have a NEGATIVE story to share? Not the type of "he got addicted and ruined his life" but "hallucinations after all are just hallucinations, and the profound effects are fake etc."
Things that seem profound can be trite, and hallucinations can be misleading. If you look on the web (or particularly on YouTube) for outsider mathematics/physics you can find a lot of slightly unbalanced people are convinced they've managed to square the circle or invent perpetual motion machines. Drugs make such epiphanies far more intense and increase the risk of false positives. Stuff that may seem super-meaningful at the time may be just incongruous, which is noticeable with a lot of art done on drugs (as opposed to inspired by drugs); the mind wanders in many interesting directions, but it wander off into many uninteresting ones too.
But that's like anything else - you watch a classic old movie and it utrns out to have a few (ro even many) scenes that just drag, or a book turns out to have some excellent ideas but also a fair amount of filler, a scientific paper is a theoretical breakthrough but also contains some conjectures that turn out to be wrong. Einstein went to his grave a frustrated man insofar as he was unable to articulate a theory of everything that would have made relatively consistent with quantum mechanics, but we don't think of Einstein as a failure.
Think of it like a prism for your mind. A prism allows you to see light and color in a wholly new way, but you wouldn't want to wear prisms in front of your eyes like spectacles because you would be constantly misjudging things and banging your knees. Doesn't mean that what you can see with a prism is false, it's just not optimal for continual use.
You can read a lot of different stories about it on Erowid. Anyway a lot of people treat mushrooms as a party drug, so I assume those people don't consider themselves to have had profound visions.
There does seem to be a subculture of people who take the visions way too seriously. They believe it's giving knowledge of an external reality. I think it's a little bit like a reset button - your beliefs and thinking patterns are disrupted, particularly the ones which you don't normally question. This may happen consciously (as it did with the OP) but I suspect a lot of it is unconscious.
I've done it just a handful of times. The most profound experience was negative-positive. I didn't take proper precautions, and I have a tendency to negative thoughts which was highly accentuated by the experience. Think terror worse than any horror movie for several hours (although with some nice parts too). But confronting your demons, literally, has its advantages. Actually more than anything else it's pushed me to try to take control of those negative thoughts.
EDIT: FYI there is no such thing as getting physically addicted to magic mushrooms. Quite the opposite, there are regular reports of people kicking addictions as a result.
I do not consider mushrooms to be a party drug. neither do I consider weed to be a party drug, but that's just me. historically, I have been addicted to smoking for quite some time... but, you know, there's an interesting thing that happened after I started to take mushrooms.
in comparison to smoking a joint, I would previously smoke before programming, and what would sometimes happen is I would end up smoking another, and another, and another; chasing that dragon until I felt inspired. however, if you were to do a few g's of shrooms instead, the last thing you're gonna be thinking is, "wow I'm gonna drop another few g's" like you'd be thinking after smoking a joint ... I'm usually so overloaded by the mind expanding experience I just had, that's the last thing I wanna do. I won't do them more often that once a week, and I'm a highly addictive personality. actually, I've noticed that I tend to not want to drink alcohol, or ... well really anything addicting, and watched all addictive behavior reduce every time. I just want to create. I now neither need mushrooms anymore. the changes seem to be permanently enlightening.
I've not tried LSD (cause I can't get it here), but I know that Jobs was a huge proponent of it. from what I can gather, the concept is similar.
I think, if you are somewhat grounded individual, I believe your experience will be something of exaggerated connection with nature, other humans, and your own creative ideas. perhaps it's a bit illusory, but I have never seen a detrimental side-effect to redefining your connection with your immediate world with that sort of illusory connection.
you cannot overdose on mushrooms. I also found I am less inclined to simplistic forms of thoughtless hedonism, focusing a bit more on the bigger picture. I find that creativity and novelty are forefront in my mind for at least a few days afterwards, if not permanently.
compare that with alcohol, and I think you may rethink your next few mindless sloshers.
@neilk, I believe that the negative-positive experiences are actually the best. IMO, it's just soo easy to smoke a doobie or go get smashed -- yet reality tends to come back with a vengeance afterward. however, if you're forced to look at something like that, and you can get past it, my best experiences have usually come about with that feeling of freedom after leaving behind a retarded mindset.
1 - If you've ever had alcohol, you've done a drug.
2 - marijuana is a more common first "drug" than hallucinogens, for good reason. Although temporary psychotic breaks CAN happen, they are rare, and it is an otherwise pretty innocuous drug.
3- as for hallucinogens: SET, SETTING, and DOSAGE.
Negative story: taking mushrooms with a friend when neither of us were in a good place, emotionally. [bad set] Got confused at the typical 20 minutes in when you "think nothing is happening maybe they didn't work" (this thought ALWAYS occurs) both ate more mushrooms. [bad dosage] Bad bad negative hallucinations. Head on upside down. Turned in to prehistoric bird. Friend outside on the street screaming racist epithets (not normally a racist dude) Luckily ghetto neighbors did not execute him (people can be much more tolerant than we give them credit for) police came and were astonishingly restrained, brought him to hospital. Very close call.
I still concur that hallucinogens are a great thing. But it bears repeating, respect Leary's SET, SETTING, and DOSAGE.
One should always be prepared for a bad trip. They do happen and were a known risk often discussed back in the early days. A bad trip can be pretty terrible and there really isn't anyway to stop it short of going to the emergency room for a shot of Thorazine. Many people have had them and chalk it up to a bad setting or a bad mood and then go on to enjoy good trips, but if you don't think you could handle one (One friend described hers and riding a roller coaster through mud for 8 hours) then I wouldn't recommend it. Also, if there is a history of mental illness in your family tree then I would be especially cautious. I did have a friend lose it and end up in the psyche ward for two weeks, but I'm sure it was a latent condition that got triggered.
I didn't find them very profound, just hallucinations shake up your brain pathways like a snowglobe and you consider things you wouldn't have before that seemed impossible. It also gives you new insight into "reality" and how your brain is largely interpreting everything uniquely and you can't always trust your own sight.
Those people who saw the light or aliens/ghosts probably haven't done LSD or they'd realize not to trust anything their brain interprets without sober analysis. "Holy shit, that prophet ghost was a pretty sweet hallucination" instead of writing a book about it and creating a religion.
There are most definitely "bad trips" which can be deeply frightening, scarring experiences. The worst effects though seem to come to those who become somewhat psychologically addicted to the thrill of the experience, and take repeated doses every few days or weeks over a period of years.
The closest analogy I can make is to PTSD; they have trouble dealing with the banality and slow pace of normal life, and seem somehow "burnt out" (cliche, but a very apt term for someone who took one trip too many.)
