This seriously resonates with me, and it's been the biggest problem I've had with the whole psychedelic "experience." I've taken LSD once on my own and once with my close friend, and both times recorded briefly with video what was happening during my trip. The recording was mostly nonsense both times. ut in my head, at that time, I know that I was sailing through tangible layers of true love that spun me wildly through the 50 thought processes I was engaged in simultaneously. By the third day after my last (and most intense) trip, I could hardly remember anything except for some of the more vivid and significant moments during and shortly after my peak. If, now, I could tap into what I was feeling at that time and at that night when I came down, I'd be the most peaceful and centered, focused and happy person in the world. I wonder if anyone else who's gone down the psychedelic road can familiarize with this. edit: unrelated to the article, if anyone wants to watch me try to explain my very first trip right after I peaked, I was kinda thinking about putting it on YouTube for lols.Some college student gets his hands on some DMT, visits here, you guys tell him about universal love and transcendent joy, he wakes up, says that his life has been changed, suddenly he truly understands what really matters. But it never lasts. The next day he’s got to get up and go to work and so on, and the universal love lasts about five minutes until his boss starts yelling at him for writing his report in the wrong font, and before you know it twenty years later he’s some slimy lawyer who’s joking at a slimy lawyer party about the one time when he was in college and took some DMT and spent a whole week raving about transcendent joy, and all the other slimy lawyers laugh, and he laughs with them, and so much for whatever spiritual awakening you and your colleagues in LSD and peyote are trying to kindle in humanity.
One thing to keep in mind is that psychedelics provide a window into that state of mind, not a permanent pathway. A significant amount of work has to be done between trips in order to train the mental discipline required to maintain that sort of peace. Meditation's an important part. I used to suffer from 'failed seeker' syndrome back in college. I had associated transcendent peace with LSD and psilocybin mushrooms (at least after the two hour period of psilocybin insecurity subsided), and so I consistently tried to access that state of mind using the drug. The returns diminish very, very quickly when you don't put in any work between the trips, and I got pretty jaded to spirituality as a whole. What I eventually found was that the state of peace I experienced during those experiences was a natural baseline state, and that it would only subside when some outside influence distracted me from it and triggered my ego to protect itself (probably knocking me down a level or two on Maslow's hierarchy). Sometimes I'd find that, after a trip, one conversation would put me back in my normal thought processes until I 'remembered' that peace and allowed it to return. The best thing you can do for yourself is train your mental discipline between trips, because each time you'll find you can take a little more back with you provided you stay focused. The other important thing to keep in mind is that LSD is great for synthesizing everything you've experienced between trips, so be sure to space them out so your mind has a chance to build itself back up before you break it down again. Finally, keep in mind that you often won't notice how much your perspective has actually changed after a trip. Even if you don't feel that same transcendental peace, that might not be the most important part--there's a good chance your perspective has opened up in ways you're not aware of since you're used to it now.