What Hallucinogens Will Make You See (2023)

https://nautil.us/what-hallucinogens-will-make-you-see-308247/

by simonebrunozzi • 9 months ago

88 89 9 months ago

ashleyn2• 9 months ago

I have such vivid memories of experiencing many of these things in infancy and early childhood. Especially pareidolia, mild object activation, and scenery slicing. Hasn't really happened much in almost thirty years. Is there any research on like, if this is a side effect of brain development? It's always made me wonder.

gyomu3• 9 months ago

Discussed in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44804768

gyomu3• 9 months ago

The article is a short selection from a more complete website: https://www.effectindex.com/effects

The effort is purely descriptive and does not seem to correlate the various effects with their cause (nothing wrong with that, still interesting).

This article provides a good overview of various theories:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-theory-for-why-people-...

ashleyn2• 9 months ago

What I find very interesting is the strong resemblance to dreams some generative image/video AI can produce.

toastar• 9 months ago

I had struggled to describe a bad trip I'd had until some of the text-to-video models from a few years ago became more accessible and nailed the morphing visuals and general uneasiness I'd felt, of course it was unintentional. The recent increase in quality has erased those features for better or for worse.

dylan604• 9 months ago

It makes sense though. Our brains are constantly trying to recognize familiar out of everything it sees. The DeepDream from Googs does essentially the same thing. Starting with static, it "finds" patterns that then leads to seeing even more patterns that start to be recognizable. Or the other system that kept finding Ryan Gosling in images he clearly was not in. The DeepDream starting with static definitely reminds me of closing my eyes and watching the show with a head full of something.

temp08263• 9 months ago

Fun list, I'm glad there is language around some of this. I've drank ayahuasca around 500 times personally in a traditional context (somewhat of an apprenticeship setting) and have experienced most of these effects. In the tradition I've been learning, it's pretty fascinating just how vast the indigenous understanding of that space is- they really have words for everything and the mechanisms behind what they see (as well as an understanding of how those things manifest outside of that space, in normal waking life). And more importantly how those things can be worked with and released through the practice. We're really only beginning to scratch the surface here (in the "western" context) but at least it's starting.

tayo42• 9 months ago

That's crazy?

Once a week for 10 years? Everyday for almost 2?

optimalsolver• 9 months ago

It can get real bad:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DMT/comments/gb9ar0/dark_dmt_trip_r...

embedding-shape• 9 months ago

So can embarking on building a startup: https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/theranos-darden-case

Neither cases prove that either ecosystems are net-negative compared to the overall benefits.

thot_experiment3• 9 months ago

Salvia is such a slept on hallucinogen, I would highly recommend it if you have experience tripping. It's legal in California.

It's not fun in the way party drugs or low dose mushrooms are, it's more of a type-2 fun, not necessarily fun in the moment but sure as hell gives you a unique experience to reflect on when you're sober 10 minutes later.

gryfft• 9 months ago

more of a type-2 fun, not necessarily fun in the moment

This is a funny and accurate way of looking at it.

After trying it a few times I felt like I had seen everything salvia had to show me. A dissociative kaleidoscope that leaves you coughing and sweaty loses its novelty pretty quick.

thot_experiment3• 9 months ago

I haven't touched it in many years as well (though this thread has made me curious how I would feel about it now, so I may change that), but I think I attribute a lot of my general stability/resilience to bad trips when it comes to hallucinogens to my salvia use giving me experience with a mindstate that can easily tip into an H.R. Geiger kaleidoscope as you said.

ProllyInfamous• 9 months ago

sure as hell gives you a unique experience

IMHO not worth it — salvia is terrifying much more often than mushrooms / acid. Definitely not something for a "first time psychonaut," and certainly shouldn't be legal.

Among my most terrifying dissassociative moments (you will not know who you, nor anything else, is).

thot_experiment3• 9 months ago

Correct, even though it was the first hallucinogenic substance I ever tried I would not recommend that other people do the same thing, the potential for a bad trip if you're inexperienced is very high.

Workaccount22• 9 months ago

Salvia is great if you are down with weird. Not fun, not euphoric, but weird. A level of weird that most people would instictively recoil from.

user688587883• 9 months ago

I would love to try hallucinogens but I’m worried that it’ll aggravate my HPPD. It’s a pretty rare condition, and only a single optometrist I’ve spoken with actually believes I experience it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...

noman-land• 9 months ago

Have you seen the interviews about HPPD that Andrew Callaghan has done? He's a long time sufferer as well.

Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder - 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#4) feat. Dr. Wesley Ryan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9pK4q7_VUc

user688587883• 9 months ago

No, I haven’t. Thank you for the link!

Aurornis2• 9 months ago

HPPD is by definition a lasting effect of hallucinogens. The diagnostic criteria begins with the phrase “Following cessation of hallucinogen use”

If you’ve never tried hallucinogens, you wouldn’t really qualify as having HPPD. There are other terms for visual issues that people can experience that look similar, but HPPD is specifically a hallucinogen-triggered condition.

I do agree, though: If you’re already having visual issues it would be very wise to avoid hallucinogens.

user688587883• 9 months ago

My best guess is that HPPD was triggered by how I used NyQuil as a young teen. I would drink half a bottle, sleep for half the day, and wake up feeling better. I did this pretty regularly for a few years whenever I got sick.

sambapa• 9 months ago

This article is a lazy ctrl-c from psychonautwiki.

For example: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Geometry#8B_-_Perceived_expo...

kristenfrench2• 9 months ago

I'm so sorry you did not enjoy it! We wanted to bring Josie Kins' index and research to our readers and did reach out to them for a bit of background.

jamal-kumar2• 9 months ago

I enjoyed it, people like to complain. If you wanna go further back on sources there's some pretty good stuff in like, math magazines hahaha

https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-ha...

GolfPopper• 9 months ago

'Wail to god' (the second piece of artwork at that link) strongly resembles a brighter, faster, and more detailed version of what I see whenever I close my eyes but still try to pay attention to what I'm "seeing".

(Normally, I "tune out" my visual field when I close my eyes. And for reference, my mind's eye is weak, but I do not think I have complete aphantasia.)

takoid• 9 months ago

If you’re interested in accurate examples of visual effects of hallucinogens, check out /r/Replications. Some of them are shockingly accurate. Here are some good examples:

https://reddit.com/r/replications/comments/1ll9k7o/flight/

https://reddit.com/r/replications/comments/1jkajcq/that_mome...

https://reddit.com/r/replications/comments/1hruv4t/just_visi...

sho_hn4• 9 months ago

This is very cool. I have never been on drugs and don't plan to ever change that, but it's very interesting to get an impression of the experience.

I have to say it's a bit underwhelming. It's interesting how the closest analog I can think lf is early generative image AI hallucinatory stuff.

gyomu3• 9 months ago

I have to say it's a bit underwhelming

Well, yeah. It’s like watching a video of a rollercoaster on your phone, vs riding in one.

margalabargala• 9 months ago

I have to say it's a bit underwhelming.

I mean, yeah, you're looking at an image on your computer screen.

Seeing a video of Niagara Falls or a photo of a person at the Grand Canyon similarly capture the difference to the real thing.

gchamonlive2• 9 months ago

Our culture is very image-centric. You have to understand that the drug induced image distortions are just a very specific side-effect that is part of a larger whole.

Hallucinogens act on deeper mechanisms that control from visual perception all the way to the sense of self. It can fundamentally change during the experience the way you see yourself and the world. It's not uncommon for users of LSD or DMT and psilocybin to describe the experience as getting in touch with the interconnectedness of all things. Also bad trips can be very terrifying because of how much you are exposed to the experience. Like dying or feeling the fleeting nature of existence very present in your skin.

All this to say that videos don't do any of this justice. It's just a fun way to represent the image distortions.

nowittyusername• 9 months ago

I was using stable diffusion 1.5 when it came out and had my first LSD trip shortly after that, prolly like a few months. Anyways, what struck me was how similar the closed eyes visuals were on LSD compared to the generated images from stable diffusion when i was using it on low CFG and also some of my poorly trained textual inversions at the time. Watching the "training process" of the textual inversion in the early epochs made a lot of such images before the TI finally completed. Makes me think if the processes are somehow related, like if in human brains the reason we don't have experience seeing these "hallucinations" is because we have many robust subsystems that filter out the noise and make the mental model cohere on a stable world view.

tgv2• 9 months ago

It looks like visual migraine to me.

DontchaKnowit2• 9 months ago

The visuals are like 10% of the experience. The last thing you could describe psychedelics as is underwhelming. It is not possible for you to understand what the experience is like without trying it for yourself.

And I am not advocating for trying them. Im not one of these evangelists. But replication images are a very weak simulacrum of what the experience is actually like.

BriggyDwiggs42• 8 months ago

It’s kinda like if the feeling you see in the videos were replicated across all of your senses. Your senses kinda blur together in an indescribable way, and it’s extremely intense, kinda all consuming.

thw_9a83c• 9 months ago

The article states that "It is most commonly induced under the influence of mild dosages of psychedelic compounds, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline."

Overdose or a "bad trip" is possible with any of these three substances, so one must be extremely careful when experimenting.

I can only speak about LSD, but its visual effects are based on constant and surprising visual transformations. People's faces transform into the faces of other people or animals (which can be even frightening). Non-animate objects can transform into other objects or resemble unexpected living forms.

However, these initially unique visual experiences quickly become boring for people with clear objectives in their life. I don't think it's contact with a spiritual universe or anything like that. It might help (or not) if you try it once or twice.

carrychains• 9 months ago

The visual experience is last on the list of things psychedelics are proven through clinical study to help with. Also, unless one of those objectives is to avoid the help psychedelics can provide, having clear objectives in life isn't a predictor of how helpful it will be. Finally, "contact with the spiritual universe it whatever" isn't even on the list things that actually help subjects in these studies.

Cool story, though.

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe• 9 months ago

All those reddit images are blocked if you don't have an account btw bevause they are flagged as "mature"

h4ch1• 9 months ago

Use old reddit redirect extension or just prefix the URL with old.

whilenot-dev• 9 months ago

I don't have a reddit account and none of the images above were blocked.

analog8374• 9 months ago

I perceive a river of sights, sounds, smells, vibes, thoughts and emotions. And that's just a narrow slice. There's also a whole vast continent of nameless stuff too.

Hallucinogens change my perspective of that river. Stuff I didn't notice I start noticing. My careful sample of the river, cultivated over a lifetime, gets jiggled and smeared all over and much that was invisible becomes visible.

That said, I prefer shikantaza meditation.

throwpoaster• 9 months ago

According to Chat GPT, Nautilus still hasn’t paid its writers after the 2018 dispute.

neom2• 9 months ago

The compound and the dose are predictably the same for me, but varied between them. Low dose shrooms: One with nature, universal love, watching everything alive breath. Mid dose shrooms: I become an aztec snake, get geometry, structural universe. High dose shrooms: Past life journeys and childhood memories. Low dose acid: lo-fi geometric one love reality. Mid dose: reality is electric, seeing/feeling the "walls of reality". High dose: electric, electric, what is this thing, synthetic geometry is reality? Everything looks like electricity. 2cb low dose: saturation on 3000%, everything is the light it should be and reveals itself as such. mid dose: opposite of ego death maybe? super embodied, no fractal stuff etc, but more looks like a "rubber" reality. High dose: for me not visual or auditory, very physical almost... physical hallucinations? Melting into things, becoming them etc.

The list goes on, but it's interesting how different yet the same they all kinda feel... guess that tracks given what are actually limited variables.

Gooblebrai• 9 months ago

High dose of 2cb: Melting into things, becoming them

You mean like Salvia? I didn't know 2cb had this effect as well

neom2• 9 months ago

I've not had that experience with Salvia but I've read about what I presume you're talking about and I don't believe they are the same. 2cb feels like boundary dissolution, I'm still very much me but my edges have melted into the...couch, pillow, sheet. I think become them is way too strong of a term when compared to Salvia, I think Salvia is more towards ego replacement but 2cb is more somatic boundary changes. The 2cb effect is extremely pleasant.

lolive• 9 months ago

Schopenhauer

comeonbro• 9 months ago

Best recreation that I've seen (by a large margin) of the visual experience of a mushroom trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BxiYkCPZwI

ChrisArchitect• 9 months ago

(2023)

Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36207268

inshard• 9 months ago

I’ve occasionally seen and understood physical shapes and concepts while dreaming, which I was unable to describe or articulate in the real world once awake. It’s as if I recall how it made me feel, but I can’t describe what it was. Like the memory of a face you saw just once.

wcchandler• 9 months ago

Anecdotally speaking, I believe many of these to be largely true and a good respresentation.

I never thought about the machinescapes visual and that is very spot on. That was over 20 years ago on Salvi. I was in a basement and visualized a train driving through the wall. The thing that stood out the most is the detail of the train. It looked like an old steam train and nothing like I had ever seen before in person. Was really cool and fun experience and really short lived. All done in like 15 minutes. Never really noticed the level of detail that was present until just now looking back on it.

Another great experience I had that was captured well in this was on LSD at a competitive paintball event. I could visualize the paintball streams coming at me as solid lines. I knew exactly where people were shooting at. It stood out very prominently. But also, I could “feel” an opponent moving on the other side of the field. We were ~20 meters/yards apart behind opposite bunkers but I knew exactly where and when he was moving. I could feel his moves through the ground. Like we were both remotely connected like the mycelium of a mushroom. His left movements pulled me to the right. We were connected together.

I’m really grateful to have experienced these things.

therobots927• 9 months ago

My favorite part about magic mushrooms is the impact on my visual field. Colors get incredibly vibrant and at higher doses everything gets fractalized, especially if you’re looking at things like trees. If they only came with the visual effects, not the panic-inducing feeling of floating out of my body, I would take them much more frequently than once or twice a year.

Workaccount22• 9 months ago

The thing about psychedelics that is hard (really, impossible) to convey to the uninitiated is that the hallucinations are a secondary effect. The real show is the bending of your consciousness, which no image, video, or written description can really capture. It's akin to trying to describe color to a blind person.

moribvndvs• 8 months ago

I am very intrigued by hallucinogens, but I am a risk-adverse person and an unregulated market makes me very uncomfortable. A friend of a friend grew mushrooms and I tried them last year; alas, I under-dosed. In the meantime, I’ve experienced the ganzfeld effect via sensory deprivation a bunch, which is kind of a lot of effort for an extremely mild and unreliable effect, but when it works it’s quite enjoyable. The worst that happens is no hallucination but I have a very peaceful meditative session, so there’s no real downside. Just a little sidebar for my curious but mild people out there.

What Hallucinogens Will Make You See (2023)

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