Trying to be happy via drugs drives home just how non-arbitrary it is.
Drugs give you variation around a set point. Uppers crash you down. Downers make you tense when they wear off. Only real world work can move that set point around which drugs just make you fluctuate.
Psychedelics can absolutely kick that set-point into another universe if you let them. I can’t begin to explain how it works or how it feels, but I have personally have had some very significant life changes since I started using them on a regular basis.
Sure, you can use psychedelics for fun, but in a proper environment they can be a strong driver for extremely healthy mental change.
Real work is an absolute requirement. No argument there. However, a person may need a complete mental rewiring to get to the point where they are willing to move forward. Like myself.
But they don’t treat the depression by simply forcing consciousness upward through the emotional landscape. They facilitate a restructuring of conceptual maps and perceptions, and lots of this is in relation to the world and to others.
The fact that psychedelics can do this, but only tend to when they produce this big restructuring, means it’s the restructuring that does it.
And the happiness often is associated with an improved relationship with the world, an improved approach to life.
I know the relief comes before the new approach manifests, but that doesn’t mean the relief comes before the mental identification and exploration of that new approach.
The person’s karma changes before it manifests into their life. Like, even though you couldn’t measure it with a video camera, the new behavioral program’s been written. The new path has been seen.
So I think psychedelics just further indicate how non-arbitrary happiness is.
Like a person might be happier in their poverty and disease, but that doesn’t mean their life didn’t change. Their life changed because they changed — instead of snapping at their spouse they see it coming and stop to take a breath. That’s a little micro-change they got from seeing themselves and reorganizing their perceptions with psychedelics.
But when they go to family christmas they aren’t going to tell their father-in-law “I stopped snapping at her so much. I was doing it all the time and then I became conscious of it and I do it a lot less”.
That’s a change in the person’s life, which slips past our notice when we conceptualize “what were his circumstances? Did the mood change come from a change in circumstances or some chemical thing?”
If those are the only two categories, taking a heroic dose of shrooms to explore one’s depression and anxiety might seem like it falls under “some chemical thing” being the change that happened.
But if we allow more categories, it’s better to say he changed his karma. It may manifest later in a higher paying job or a new house, but for now it’s only manifest in a change of the amount of tension in the room between him and his wife.
Trying to be happy via drugs drives home just how non-arbitrary it is.
Drugs give you variation around a set point. Uppers crash you down. Downers make you tense when they wear off. Only real world work can move that set point around which drugs just make you fluctuate.
Psychedelics can absolutely kick that set-point into another universe if you let them. I can’t begin to explain how it works or how it feels, but I have personally have had some very significant life changes since I started using them on a regular basis.
Sure, you can use psychedelics for fun, but in a proper environment they can be a strong driver for extremely healthy mental change.
Real work is an absolute requirement. No argument there. However, a person may need a complete mental rewiring to get to the point where they are willing to move forward. Like myself.
They are being explored for clinical applications like treating depression.
But they don’t treat the depression by simply forcing consciousness upward through the emotional landscape. They facilitate a restructuring of conceptual maps and perceptions, and lots of this is in relation to the world and to others.
The fact that psychedelics can do this, but only tend to when they produce this big restructuring, means it’s the restructuring that does it.
And the happiness often is associated with an improved relationship with the world, an improved approach to life.
I know the relief comes before the new approach manifests, but that doesn’t mean the relief comes before the mental identification and exploration of that new approach.
The person’s karma changes before it manifests into their life. Like, even though you couldn’t measure it with a video camera, the new behavioral program’s been written. The new path has been seen.
So I think psychedelics just further indicate how non-arbitrary happiness is.
Like a person might be happier in their poverty and disease, but that doesn’t mean their life didn’t change. Their life changed because they changed — instead of snapping at their spouse they see it coming and stop to take a breath. That’s a little micro-change they got from seeing themselves and reorganizing their perceptions with psychedelics.
But when they go to family christmas they aren’t going to tell their father-in-law “I stopped snapping at her so much. I was doing it all the time and then I became conscious of it and I do it a lot less”.
That’s a change in the person’s life, which slips past our notice when we conceptualize “what were his circumstances? Did the mood change come from a change in circumstances or some chemical thing?”
If those are the only two categories, taking a heroic dose of shrooms to explore one’s depression and anxiety might seem like it falls under “some chemical thing” being the change that happened.
But if we allow more categories, it’s better to say he changed his karma. It may manifest later in a higher paying job or a new house, but for now it’s only manifest in a change of the amount of tension in the room between him and his wife.