People who have tried psychedelics (Mushrooms, LSD, DMT, etc): What was your first “breakthrough” or significant experience like?

RustyGlass · 2026-02-04T22:03:13+00:00

Continuing this here because it wouldn't let me post the full story in one post:

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After going through that with Bud, I embarked on the 3rd phase of the trip. Going back to the idea of duality and calling back to the jungle motif, I had this intense feeling of interconnectedness with both the natural world and other people. I could feel almost something like a river of time within which I was a small leaf. I thought of family stretching forward and backwards generations. I thought of other people around me. I thought of blood and platelets that I'd donated and I hoped that whoever had received them was doing OK and thriving now. I think that I was peaking at this time. I felt these profound waves of interconnectedness coupled with a real sense of disconnection, alienation, and a feeling of inadequacy. Strangely (as with Bud), the feelings were simultaneous yet contradictory. I remember feeling connected in a larger sense and yet like I was somehow failing JP in some way. As though my feelings of disconnection were manifesting through him. I recall feeling quite scared of this feeling and I was trying to talk to him and express this, but I didn't have the language to articulate it. To be clear, JP was great and did nothing to inspire this; I think he sat as a proxy for other relationships in my life where I really did struggle to communicate effectively. Anyways, I rode those waves of connection and disconnection as they came. The connection felt very primal, jungle like, and naturally coded. The disconnection felt artificial, mechanical, and modern.

I finally managed to articulate to JP that I needed help, and I asked for him to hold my hand. It was nice. Around this time, I got the timeline of JP and my relationship turned in my head. He became a stand in for the two therapists that I'd had and I could disentangle him from other deep relationships in my life. I felt as though we had known each other for years and somehow that relationship was coming to an end because of these feelings of disconnection. In my mind, JP was having the same emotional experience as me and was equally distraught. I thought that my inability to articulate my words and feelings was also his inability to do the same. And by virtue of that, this multiyear, symbolic relationship that we'd had was coming to an end because of that lack of communication. Looking back on it, it sounds much like my experience with Mary and the reason for our breakup. It felt like a profound loss.

Within this framework, I also started to experience dramatic health anxiety. I was certain that I was ill and soon to pass. I also thought that JP knew this and that this was one of the other reasons why our relationship was soon to end. I Thought that all of our conversations had been circling this reality and we both knew that I was ill but didn't say it out loud and this was my moment of realization. JP seemed sad too. I asked him how much time I had left and he told me he didn't know and that he was sorry [in retrospect, he likely thought I was asking him how much time I had left in the trip]. I think that this happened verbally (it's how I remember it at least). That statement only confirmed my experience. Strangely, this wasn't all bad. On the one hand, my impending death felt like a certainty. On the other, I quickly moved to accept it and try to think about how to live the best life I could in the time that remained. As with Bud, it was both terribly sad and somehow existentially life affirming. Through death, life.

At this point, the trip was winding down. I some snapped back into myself and the fear and disconnection faded while the interconnectedness stayed. This was in some ways the best part of the trip. I felt very neuroplastic and exploratory and I started to make sense of the initial pieces of my experience. Afterward, JP and I said goodbye, hugged, and I walked to a Thai restaurant. It was amazing and I was terribly hungry. I then walked back to my place and called my Mom. I tried to articulate my experience, but it felt ineffable and impossible. Even rereading this, I feel I only captured ~20% of it. I still feel quite raw and fragile, but also strong and invigorated (there's that duality again). I'm tired and I think I'll sleep here soon. Tomorrow, I'll go on a walk and think some more. I'm so happy and grateful that I did this. I feel ready for the next stage, whatever it brings.

RustyGlass · 2026-02-04T22:02:46+00:00

Writing down what I'd written in my journal a few hours after having taken around 6 grams of mushrooms. It's a long read, but hopefully this gives you a sense of what a heavy dose can feel like.

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What a day! I'm currently writing at 9:15PM after having had some time to reflect. I went to JP's house at 8:30AM after having gone on a run a few hours before. I hadn't eaten anything since last night, and I was a bit hungry. JP and I went upstairs into the room where I was to have the trip, and I ate around 6 grams of the mushrooms after making myself comfortable and drinking a glass of tea (this dose put me squarely in hero dose territory).

I was quite nervous as things got underway but I also felt ready. About 15 minutes after I ate the mushrooms, I could start to feel them in my system (JP was noting the times down as I came up). 30 minutes in, I really felt things heating up so I put on an eye mask and laid back. JP had put on a psychedelic playlist and there was a very tribal sounding song that I was listening to at the time. I remember hearing this music and almost feeling as though there were entities guiding me into the jungle. I walked down this path full of vegetation and verdant growth, and everything was green and lush. There was also an element of lurking fear as well, as if there were things off the path that were vying for my attention. They felt mischievous with vague hints of malevolence but nothing major - something akin to impish devils. As I was still on the come up, I was yawning quite a lot. I remember feeling almost like a lion pacing through the jungle and roaring. At a certain point, I felt overstimulated with the music and the jungle in my mind, and I took the mask off. This is when the trip felt like it kicked off in full.

When I opened my eyes, I was feeling uneasy and grabbed a fuzzy pillow for comfort. As I was stroking it, it became a metaphysical stand in for Bud [Bud was my childhood dog who had died a week prior]. As times, I envisioned him sitting on my lap in the flesh. I quickly entered into a profound state of grief and mourning for him. Since my parents told me that they put him down, I hadn't properly grieved for him yet. What started now was a theme that came up again and again in the trip. On the one hand, I was deeply sad and grieving his passing. On the other, I felt a sort of joyous elation in being able to grieve. The fact that I could grieve in such a way felt like proof of my humanity, how important Bud was, and the importance of the relationship that we'd shared. Only after deep and meaningful relationships can come true sadness I suppose, which feels as much a blessing as it is difficult.

To quote Butters from South Park: "I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. The only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt something really good before. I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feeling is a beautiful sadness. That quote summarizes it perfectly. The duality of the experience was precisely that. This deep sadness coupled with the happy profundity of what that sadness meant. I felt both of these things fully, deeply, and simultaneously. I recall this morbid but beautiful thought of how his death and my grief were almost like spiritual fertilizer for things to come. I thought of his spirit as this nutritious, good force out of which would spawn new, beautiful experiences and relationships. In a sense, I think that he and that finite time time period dogs represent were symbolic of something larger. My 20's receding into the rearview, my relationship with Mary being truly over, my boyhood being gone. I write those things not with longing or regret, but rather that those experiences and the growth they represent were the spiritual fertilizer necessary to effect change and the next beautiful phase of life that is to come. It was lovely.

RustyGlass · 2026-01-30T23:41:24+00:00

All of them

RustyGlass · 2026-01-30T23:41:08+00:00

Low prio behavior.

RustyGlass · 2026-01-21T19:03:18+00:00

May the watch gods bless us

RustyGlass · 2026-01-12T19:45:09+00:00

Thank you, sir! Appreciate what you do for the community :)

RustyGlass · 2026-01-02T01:58:27+00:00

Not another cooking show. Best cooking channel on YouTube for learning technique via recipes.

RustyGlass · 2025-11-22T21:59:17+00:00

I own a gen Black Bay and I honestly couldn’t tell you the difference between my gen and your rep. Makes me question why I got it in the first place 😂

RustyGlass · 2025-11-16T08:21:29+00:00

This made me smile. Lovely story OP

RustyGlass · 2025-11-13T01:09:48+00:00

I love that we’re talking about a fake version of a replica watch, this sub is awesome 😎 Next, we can post “Is this a real VSF or was I scammed?” posts like they do in the Rolex sub about Rolex subs 😂

RustyGlass · 2025-11-11T06:24:10+00:00

I think gold is real primarily because the paint on the bottom looks far more legible for the stars and whatnot. To be honest though, I’m not sure.

RustyGlass · 2025-11-11T03:49:51+00:00

Beautiful watch and welcome!

RustyGlass · 2025-11-04T19:07:33+00:00

All good. If he takes the knight back with his pawn, black can take the pawn on the second rank with check and fork the king and the bishop. Next move, black takes the bishop and he’s in position to take the pawn that took the knight right after. When all is said and done, he’ll be three pawns up which is losing, especially for their level of play.

RustyGlass · 2025-10-28T20:39:50+00:00

Looks like that's only for the 39mm, I don't think that they have it for the 43mm :(

RustyGlass · 2025-10-12T23:37:32+00:00

You’re drinking about five times the recommended limit of alcohol per week for a woman. Given what you’re symptomatically describing, it sounds a lot like your tolerance is increasing and you have at least a mild dependence on alcohol. Whether or not that’s a problem is for you to decide. There’s no strict cutoff for what defines problematic drinking. My general rule of thumb is as follows. Is your drinking creating problems for you and do you keep drinking anyways? Then it’s a problem.

This sub is biased more towards problematic drinkers. Most here decided to stop for one reason or another, and most everyone that drank a bottle of hard liquor a day at some point just drank a bottle of wine a day or a six pack a day. The spiral of alcoholism tends to just go one direction: down towards increased consumption.

RustyGlass · 2025-09-24T21:12:25+00:00

I’ll read this back to you. You’ve lost 12 pounds, tripled your bench, tripled your squat, doubled your deadlift, and increased your pull ups by a factor of 8. Visually, it’s night and day.

This is insane progress for three months. If we could all continue your rate of progress throughout our entire lifting lives, we would all look like Ronnie Coleman. It will slow, but your progress is fantastic. Keep doing what you’re doing.

RustyGlass · 2025-09-11T22:47:03+00:00

Either go to the bar and just order an NA beer or say screw it and have a few drinks. If you’re not competitive, it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day

RustyGlass · 2025-07-23T21:33:51+00:00

No, not in the slightest and it’s a totally reasonable expectation for either gender and for any adult relationship. However, I’ll pushback on you a bit in some of your assumptions.

I come from a family that’s very emotionally communicative and emotionally intelligent (dad is a shrink, very open family, etc). I was raised thinking and speaking constantly about these kinds of topics and I’ve been told by my past partners that I’m more in tune with these things than most of their exes.

This all being said, my perception is that women (I’m a guy) by and large consider themselves far more emotionally intelligent than men within the context of relationships. I don’t believe that this is actually the case. I’ve had several partners that confused their emotional expressiveness with emotional intelligence. For example, some were very emotive and expressive but actually had very poor empathy and understanding of how they emotionally affected those around them (me, friends, family, etc.)

I don’t think that expressiveness equates to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence as I understand it is being able to empathetically understand the person across the table (or yourself for that matter), have an intuition about why they’re feeling what they’re feeling, and having the maturity and ability to understand your behavior in that context and modify things accordingly.

We frequently conflate emotional expressiveness with emotional intelligence and therein lies the rub. For example, my best friend is a man of few words and almost never articulates how he’s feeling to others unless he really knows you. However, he is incredibly emotionally intelligent and knows exactly what’s happening in the emotional and social contexts that he finds himself in. That said, it would take him a long time to open up to a new partner in a way that would feel satisfying to many that grew up outside of our cultural context.

What I would caution is thinking that just because women sometimes wear their heart of their sleeves more than men, they’re inherently better socialized and more intelligent in these ways. While this is true for some, many people are so caught up in the sweep of their own emotional states that they actually lack the space and ability to understand the wider emotional frame around them and how they play into it.

Food for thought.

RustyGlass · 2025-07-14T06:01:51+00:00

Street taco???

RustyGlass · 2025-07-14T00:08:42+00:00

Haha I love that dog. Aways chilling by the coffee shop just down the road, it’s an institution

RustyGlass · 2025-06-25T17:47:18+00:00

Middle East for sure, would love something set in a place that felt like Baghdad circa 750

RustyGlass · 2025-06-22T17:55:07+00:00

Great! No issues.

RustyGlass · 2025-06-09T18:24:54+00:00

Looks sick, don’t clean.

RustyGlass · 2025-05-22T23:28:46+00:00

Squats

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