Psychedelic Comedy and Learning to Laugh at Life

Liquid laughter is the language of a trip. It flows freely like a lapping stream and lingers as unheard echos in the user's mind. One of the most enjoyable features of a psychedelic experience is the ease with which laughter seems to be generated. This effect is particularly strong with mushrooms but it can manifest with any psychedelic drug. It would easy to explain this phenomenon away by saying that the influence of the drug lowers a users inhibitions and intensifies their positive emotions but there is far more at work here. Psychedelics allow people to look beyond their preconceived notions of normality. The mundane is seen for the absurdity that it is. Life itself becomes a psychedelic comedy and seriousness melts away which leaves a user with a new and more grounded peace of mind.

The laughter that comes along with psychedelics is far more intense than the humor one normally experiences in the sober world. It is more than a response to something you found funny. It it washes over a user with the weight of a wave falling against a stormy shore and forces one to bow to its power. It becomes all consuming. For a moment, it all that can be acknowledged and everything else becomes irrelevant. Needless to say, this is an intensely pleasurable experience. Psychedelics have a way of magnifying emotions and humor and joy are no different. These substances are not addictive but I would not blame someone who seeks this feeling often. However, the way in which this feeling works is more fascinating than the feeling itself.

The psychedelic sense of humor is far more powerful than the pleasure it brings because it allow us to laugh at things that seem too sacred to be funny. These drugs have the ability to wash away what we take for granted and the things that seem "normal," because they are common, are seen with true objectivity. When we use a psychedelic drug, the associations we typically make between concepts dissolve and we are able to examine those things without the cultural or personal meaning which we normally assign to them. The result of this liberation from "baggage" is a new freedom of thought. Our cognition is normally tainted by things like reverence, fear, and desire but psychedelics rid us of those preconceptions. When using these drugs, one may suddenly find that the depictions of religious icons, which he or she previously held in high esteem, to be hilarious because the idea of showing one's heroes being brutally killed in horrifying ways becomes absolutely absurd. Something like sex, which most of us desire and are driven to seek out, seems silly. "Look at their stupid faces" a giggling psychonaut might say when confronted with sexual images. With the use of psychedelics, grim tragedy and horror become parodies of themselves as we begin to see the crumbs of comedy hiding under their outward negativity. This is a profound revelation for anyone to come to understand and it is a lasting one.

This change in the way one perceives the world can have some very positive effects on day to day life. Like most of the benefits of psychedelics, the memory of laughing in the face of life's secret absurdities does not disappear with the influence of the drug. A user has learned that everything we do, believe, and hold dear are parts of the psychedelic comedy and this changes the way he or she approaches life. People have a habit of taking things too seriously. We can become flustered when we see something that we don't like no matter how trivial. However, when one has come to realize that everything about existence is ridiculous, the little annoyances become a little less annoying. Being offended becomes more difficult because you realize that the offender but a clown and your sense of offense needn't be the consequence of his words or deeds. You can choose to be angry or sad but the psychedelics teacht you that it is okay to laugh too. After a particularly heated discussion about Henry V in a Shakespeare class, a friend asked me how I had remained so calm during the exchange. I told her it was thanks to psychedelics but, being uninitiated, she believed that I was joking. The truth is, I understood that those words and feelings were meaningless and the level of emotion in that room was a punchline in the grand and endless joke of which we are all a part. Of all the positive aspects of tripping, learning to laugh at life is one of the greatest. When you understand that all of this stuff that we call the universe is part of the psychedelic comedy, you reach a place of peace in your mind and that is a reward worth earning, if you are willing to cross that strange threshold into the deeper parts of your consciousness.

The hallucinations make it easy to forget the other aspects of tripping but the value of those other things is undeniable. The visual aspects of a trip are certainly exciting and fun to talk about but I have always said that there is far more to tripping than seeing crazy things. The mindset, the thoughts, the feelings, and the lessons of laughter stick with the user for much longer and are much more affecting than the swirling lights, breathing walls, and trippy peacock feather patterns. If you are considering using these substances for the first time, be safe and smart about how you use them and, above all else, don't forget to laugh.

Peace.

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com