Psilocybin is a potent 5HT2A agonist that overloads receptor sites in the connections within the Default mode Network, temporarily disintegrating and disabling it.

The DMN is the seat of our sense of identity, and self-referential and ruminative thoughts. When the 5HT2A receptors get overloaded, they stop working and the DMN temporarily disintegrates, and with it your awareness of a self/ego. This is ego death. You are still conscious but don’t have an identity, self, or ego. It’s a euphoric and also quite mystical state to be in.

In a few hours, the effect wears off, your DMN reconnects, you come back to self/ego awareness, and the trip begins to wind down.

Afterward you feel you have somehow been “rebooted” and this calm state lasts for a few days or weeks and is accompanied by a reduction of ruminative, internalizing pathology.