So I did my fair share of psychedelics in college, so when a dose, which has an inconsistent amount of psylocibin in it, effects me stronger than I anticipated, I can make an educated guess about what’s happening and respond calmly. If you have little experience, it can be kind of spooky and your intuition might make it worse.

In essence, what happens is inextricable from the living experience. No more will you taste an orange by studying accounts of eating them for 3 hours than you will what it’s like to be high on mushrooms. It leaves me with the fascinating question “why do these little guys from a different kingdom of life have molecules that look like neurotransmitters?” As I’ve had it explained to me, if your consciousness is like a piece of meat that is super saiyan, then mushrooms is like going super saiyan 2 - you have a little bit more awareness which is separate from the thoughts and sensations that swim around in it. As such, when you go through your habitual loops of thought and routine, you have the space to question why you’re doing it. As such, it’s a useful tool for breaking addictions and negative thought loops. If your thoughts and actions are simply harmful, you can find it easier to just not do it. There’s a neurochemical explanation that’s like if your neurological pathways have a bunch of footprints in the direction you normally go, mushrooms are like snow that cover up the tracks so you can make new ones.

At higher doses, it’s probably harder to keep control of the pathways that are usually pretty good. You could also lose the agency to stop questioning bad loops and just be stuck witnessing them. You could also not know about the pathways and nature of consciousness and just go “what the fuck, this [bad pathway] fucking hurts!” and clench up really hard without realizing that you’re just feeling what you normally feel because of the way that you are. You might also just get overwhelmed with the sensation of observing the world and not really do much of anything.

It’s also euphoric, so some people just go “woah visuals, melty walls, and people sound weird!”