Benefits Of Psychedelics

Psychedelics have been used by humans for thousands of years and are still being used today. They have a whole sub-culture surrounding them and their use. There are millions of people who think positively about these types of drugs. There are many people who are promoting their use often claiming that they have changed their lives.

Unfortunately, most people aren't aware of this. Most people only hear negative things about psychedelics. Most people think that psychedelics are very dangerous and you only hallucinate on them and then deal with the long term consequences of this experience. And that's it.

The purpose of this article, and this entire blog really, is to spread awareness about psychedelics by expressing perspectives that are very rarely expressed. And that's why, with all the negative perceptions that surround psychedelics, I want to discuss the positive side of these drugs and explain why most psychonauts are attracted to them.

One thing that has to be mentioned is that different psychedelics can differ in the very nature and/or intensity of the effects that they give you, so, in this article, I'm going to generalize the most notable effects that most psychedelics tend to induce.

I. They Make You More Spiritual

For most people, the deepest and most notable effects of psychedelics are the spiritual ones. Because it is the deep spiritual experiences that often lead people to change their lives to a positive direction.

One of these spiritual experiences is called the "ego death". You see, most people live their lives through the lense of their egos. That's why there's so many awful people who are being dicks to their fellow human beings.

The "ego" is the false sense of self and it has many social consequences. Egoistic people tend to be hurtful to others both physically and psychologically. Ego makes us want to seek certain hierarchical positions within society and classify people into different groups. All of this separates us and creates unnecessary friction making us hurt other people and hurt ourselves at the same time, even if we're not aware of it at the moment.

Some people are more egoistic, others are less, but every has an ego. And the beauty of most psychedelics is that they can at least temporarily dissolve one's ego and make a person perceive the reality through a whole different lense. This often makes people very kind, appreciative of others and loving at the same time during the experience and even after it, as it can change the way people think - turning them into a much better people.

II. They Can Help To Get Rid Of Addiction

A life-saving quality that many psychedelics possess - they can help people to get rid of other addictions, without causing addiction in of themselves, most of the time.

Millions, if not billions of people are addicted to something. Usually the term addiction is used when talking about drugs, but sometimes, addiction can also be to certain foods or patterns of behaviour. These addictions can have very negative consequences and are usually hard to break.

And that's where many psychedelics come in. See, most traditional psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT and so on tend to suppress one's addictions and just general dependencies. This effect, if felt, is almost always strongest during the experience and it usually lasts following days after it, but it tends to decrease and old habits start to come back.

But, a lot of users report that these addictions aren't as strong as they used to be after the psychedelic experience. Plus, the realizations that you get from a psychedelic alone can help you make the change and break your addiction from purely a psychological shift.

LSD is well known to help people who have alcoholism. And Bill Wilson - the person who created alcoholics anonymous 12 step program, is known to have cured his alcoholism

Of course, psychedelics can also help break addiction by affecting you on a physiological level. Though, like I said, the effect is usually temporary. This tends to happen with most known psychedelics, but with some, it's stronger than others. Ayahuasca is known for this and it's often referred to be much more effective than acid or mushrooms.

But there's an African psychedelic that is not known widely, but is incredibly effective when it comes to treating addictions. It's extremely intense and it's addiction suppression effects are reported to be more or less permanent.

III. They Often Help To Fight Depression

One of the most known and respected effects of many psychedelics is that they tend to help to decrease or completely get rid of depression.

Hundreds of millions of people suffer from depression worldwide. It can be a debilitating mental condition which destroys people mentally. Sometimes it's caused mainly by a imbalance in the neurochemistry of a person, but almost always it's caused by psychological problems.

Often these psychological problems come from trauma that you have experienced in your life, or simply from living a lifestyle that doesn't suit your nature. And the older you get, the more these memories and notions get pushed deeper into your subconscious mind. And what psychedelics do, is they uncover your subconscious mind and let's you explore it. And during the exploration you often find deepest trauma and pain that is trapped within you that is causing you to feel really bad without being fully conscious of it. And once psychedelics make you fully conscious of certain problems that you have, then you can change them.

That's why psychedelics help people who are depressed, they make you face what you don't want to face, or what you aren't even aware of and you can't run from it. You must deal with the problems that you face.

Most of our problems are in our minds anyway, and sometimes a change in perspective is all that you need to become happy.

During 50's and 60's many people did LSD and found it to enlighten them and cure their depression. And nowadays, there are studies being made about psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, and depression.

There was a study made on terminally ill cancer patients that have severe depression. They were administered psilocybin and after the experience, most of them found their depression to be cured or at least diminished and they had been very positive when speaking about this experience.

There were also John Hopkins study which has shown that 80% people who took psilocybin mushrooms claimed that it has been in the top 5 experiences in their life.

David Nutt - a the director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit in the division of brain sciences at Imperial College London said that he is absolutely sure that psilocybin will be made legal as a treatment for depression in 2027.

IV. They Can Often Treat PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychological disorder which affects millions of people world wide.

Mainly people who develop it have been raped, saw someone get murdered or had any sort of really traumatic experience. It's very hard to treat, especially if the causal experience had been very intense and often, our brains want to hide these experiences from us. Our conscious minds often try to run away from these experiences, but, like I said, our subconscious minds store memories of all our traumatic experiences and to really deal with PTSD, most people need to dig deep within themselves.

That's where psychedelics come in. If successful, they often make people explore both conscious and subconscious realms of their minds, analyze the traumatic events that they had experienced and tackle their problems head-on.

According to some estimates, about 20 veterans commit suicide every single day in the United States alone due to PTSD or other closely related psychological disorders that are associated a with the traumatic experiences that these people went through. A horrifying statistic indeed, but what can be done about it?

Well, there have been studies made on the MDMA assisted psychotherapy on veterans with severe PTSD. And the success rate of MDMA assisted psychotherapy was about 4 times greater than the regular non-psychedelic psychotherapy.

V. They Boost Your Creativity

There are very few things in life that can boost your creativity like psychedelics can.

Psychedelics tend to place their users in a state of mind which is incredibly creative and imaginative. That's why they are the reason why many great artists and scientists have created, invented or just came up with many of their wonders and masterpieces that directly contributed to humanity.

Beatles began making some of the best music in their life after being inspired by LSD. Steve Jobs is known to have praised it as a tool that enhances your spirituality, creativity and he even claimed that taking LSD was one of the most meaningful experiences in his life along with raising a family and starting his business. Francis Crick is said to have discovered the DNA molecule during an acid trip. Bill Wilson has kicked his alcoholism and created alcoholics anonymous - a famous twelve step program which helps people to get rid of their alcoholism. And he even originally put LSD as a thirteenth step, but as it became illegal he had to pull it off the program.

So, if it wasn't for LSD we probably wouldn't have apple computers, iPhones and other great things that took a lot of creativity and imagination.

And that's just LSD, other psychedelics have also helped many people with many creative issues. Especially since LSD is a very relatively new psychedelic whereas other ones like psilocybin, mescaline and DMT have been used for thousands of years by humans.

Conclusion

Psychedelics can help people to reach deep spiritual states which can often lead to great insights and a better personality. They can help you to get rid of different dangerous addictions, while almost always not causing addiction in and of themselves. They can help to diminish or destroy depression and PTSD. And also are great tools that can help to give you an increase in creativity and inspiration. And these are just few main benefits of psychedelic drugs.

Unfortunately, most people are unaware of this all that they hear about drugs are their negative effects. Psychedelics tend to be some of the safest drugs on earth that also provide their users with many great benefits. And that is why i wrote this article and why I started this blog. I want to show people the other side of the coin and help them understand psychedelics better.