Psychedelics capacity to help people entertain new ideas may allow them create new stories of who they are
For the unwell, the patients who stand to gain the most from the fact that The capacity for psychedelics to break habitual thought patterns may help adults be able to entertain new ideas are probably those suffering from the kinds of mental disorders characterized by excessive low-entropy states: addiction, depression, obsession. There are a range of difficulties and pathologies in adults, like depression, that are connected with the phenomenology of rumination and an excessively narrow, ego-based focus characterized by the functions of default mode network. You get stuck on the same thing, you can’t escape, you become obsessive, perhaps addicted. It seems plausible that the psychedelic experience could help us get out of those states and create an opportunity in which the old stories of who we are might be rewritten. The experience could work as a kind of reset—as when you introduce a burst of entropy into a system that has gotten locked into a rigid pattern. Quieting the default mode network and loosening the grip of the ego through practices such as mindfulness might also be helpful to such people. In fact psychedelic therapy has shown an 80 percent absency rate after six months and 67 percent after one-year.
References
- Pollan, Micheal. (2018). How to Change Your Mind Chapter 5. The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Psychedelics (Location 4471). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Psychology / Neuropsychology / Pharmacology / Biochemistry / Neurochemistry Status:☀️