Meditation, is a way to control the ‘chimp brain’. The annoying little fucker that gives narrative to your life and judges everything and creates ‘ANTs’ – Automatic Negative Thoughts.
Meditation enables you to dissociate from thoughts and emotions and just watch them go by…
Psychedelic chemicals such as psilocybin appear to work in a similar way by shutting off the blood flow to parts of the brain which create the concept of ‘the self’ and the ego. Combine the 2 and you can learn a lot about yourself and at the same time see the world without your ego…which is normally a good thing.
There is some amazing recent research on the topic, including this study carried out in 2016.
High-dose psilocybin produced large decreases in clinician- and self-rated measures of depressed mood and anxiety, along with increases in quality of life, life meaning, and optimism, and decreases in death anxiety. At 6-month follow-up, these changes were sustained, with about 80% of participants continuing to show clinically significant decreases in depressed mood and anxiety. Participants attributed improvements in attitudes about life/self, mood, relationships, and spirituality to the high-dose experience, with >80% endorsing moderately or greater increased well-being/life satisfaction.
Amazing stuff!
Psychedelics are quite oddly, interlinked with many MMA fighters, probably thanks to Joe Rogan!
Here’s former UFC fighter Dan Hardy talking about his experiences with mushrooms and ayahuasca:
One final note, I can’t advise taking mushrooms, because I’ve never done it myself (just read a lot of Ram Dass’s stuff and listened to Joe Rogan a few too many times), but if you do ensure that you consider ‘set and setting’ and you need someone to guide you.
If you have time, watch this amazing video from the John Hopkins research, the participant talks about how important it was to have someone there to guide him.
There are also quite a few TED talks about psilocybin mushrooms too:
Update 2024 –
Whilst we should all be using a qualified therapist to assist with psychedelic work to help with depression, anxiety and trauma, it’s not always possible for everyone. It’s mega expensive for one thing.
Whilst I don’t advise using psychedelics at all, if you do…integration is key. You will have a good feeling and uplift in your mood for weeks, or months after a macrodose in many cases, but it won’t last forever, unless you address what’s made you depressed etc in the first place.
For example, if you have a shitty group of friends that always put you down, or childhood trauma that you’ve still not fully processed, you will need to take some further action; like binning off your crap mates and perhaps doing some EMDR work for trauma.
Here’s pdf worksheet I found that may help with the “work” – https://medicinalmindfulness.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Psychedelic_Integration_Guidebook_FinalKMv4_1_.pdf