The Psychedelic Diaries, Vol IX: Seven strange aspects of macrodosing

Ray Christian
3 min readJun 4, 2021

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“Life is a continual process of arrival into who we are”

Maria Popova

Note — free version of this article is available here

Most of these ‘del diaries have focused on the profound and big picture aspects of psychedelic macrodosing.

On today’s episode, we’re doing a Sirius XM Deep Tracks special edition to discuss some of the quirky parts of the experience.

These less-talked-about aspects can manifest during the actual trip, afterwards, or both.

Seven surprising aspects of macrodosing

1) The 5th-grade-recess-with-your-best-friend type laugh

There’s a different type of laugh when you let go.

It becomes a full body experience.

The laugh changes your state of mind.

For many of us, adulthood can restrain our ability to indulge in the giggles. It can feel immature or childish.

That’s a shame because a belly laugh is one of the most enjoyable human experiences.

Psychedelic therapy causes two developments:

A) you’re able to see the humor in more situations, and

B) when you hear a real knee-slapper, you aren’t afraid to show it

You’ll laugh harder and, oh by the way, you will be funnier.

2) More eye contact

Psychedelic therapy seems to encourage you to make more eye contact with people.

This is a fun development because you will have a very disarming vibe. There’s something innocent and gentle about the look in your eyes when you’re in the afterglow of psychedelic therapy.

When a passer-by catches your gaze they won’t be threatened in the least bit.

On the contrary, it often leads to a serendipitous smile. It’s small, and perhaps cliche, but an impromptu smile can brighten your day, and theirs.

3) Feeling floored

Laying on the floor is oddly the most satisfying way to spend much of your indoor trip.

The experience harkens back to your days as a youth… and there’s something freeing about it.

The preparation ritual is also gratifying. Clean the floor, throw a bunch of pillows and blankets, and create a macrodose nest for yourself.

4) Better to be lucky than good

Some say, during a macrodose and in the Mozart Zone afterwards, you’re tempting Lady Luck.

5) A rediscovery of your body

During the second half of the trip, when a little movement is more manageable, there’s a unique experience with your body.

If you engage slow movements and stretches with closed eyes, it will feel like a rediscovery.

It’s difficult to describe but the gentle range of motion exercises feel like you’re conducting a human-avatar physics experiment.

The closed-eyes movements will remind you of the wonder of your physical body, kinda like Jake Sully’s first awakening.

Speaking of closed-eyes, there’s a machine learning training method callout dropout.

After many training epochs, you remove nodes and related learned paths, then force the network to retrain with less inputs.

You could argue psychedelic therapy overall is a macro analogy of dropout.

You can experience a human version of neural network dropout at a micro level, with the closed-eyes-and-gentle-movement exercise.

6) Scaredy cat

You’ll be a little scared each time.

You’d think after 100+ wonderful trips I’d feel like the Terminator going into a new session. And yet, there’s still a tinge of fear every time I macrodose.

Tough to pinpoint how or why this occurs, but my best guess is it has to do with ego dissolution.

The ego builds a construct of reality and psychedelic macrodosing often resets that construct. The pang of concern may be your ego fighting to keep its reality construct.

7) Signs of synchronicity

Like #4 above, we probably won’t be seeing scientific publications on this nuance.

You may notice more coincidences, more déjà vu, more Paulo-Coehlo’s-The-Alchemist-type feelings that the universe is conspiring to help you.

It can feel like there is a plan for you, so, if possible, try to sit back and enjoy the show.

The little things in life can make the biggest difference.

The strange side of macrodosing can help you see the world with a fresh lens… and sometimes that’s all you need.

See Volume X here: Mastering the macrodose

ray@textpert.ai

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Ray Christian
Ray Christian

Written by Ray Christian

Innovator, designer, strategist, public speaker, psychonaut. Engaged in a love affair with cutting-edge mental healthcare, AI, & psychedelics