Why Tripping Feels Like Meditation: Psychiatrist Unravels the Experience of Being High

The euphoric high induced by psychedelics like LSD and magic mushrooms shares striking similarities with deep meditative states, explains psychiatrist Mendel Kaelen. Brain imaging and subjective reports reveal overlapping features that point to a unifying psychology of altered consciousness.

Psychedelics and meditation both involve coming unstuck from ordinary consciousness. Though seemingly worlds apart, these experiences exhibit parallel phenomenology and neurology.

Losing Yourself: How Psychedelics Quiet the Ego

Like skilled meditators, people on psychedelic trips frequently report ego dissolution - a fading sense of self and separation from the external world.

Neuroimaging shows psychedelics also dampen brain network activity associated with the ego. This manifests as oceanic feelings of unity and interconnectedness.

By disrupting ego circuits, psychedelics and meditation both create a subjective merging with one's surroundings. Inner and outer reality become interwoven.

Focus on the Present: Psychedelics Mimic Meditation's Effects

Psychedelics replicate another core feature of meditation: heightened focus on the present moment unburdened by reminiscence or planning.

Brain scans demonstrate psychedelics reduce activity and connectivity in the default mode network (DMN), which is linked to mind-wandering and self-reflection.

Quieting the DMN generates hyper-present awareness akin to samadhi states achieved by meditators, according to Dr. Kaelen.

Visual Shapeshifting: Seeing Beyond the Physical

Psychedelic trips and deep meditation also share sensory effects like visual geometries emerging behind closed eyes.

These geometric hallucinations appear rooted in neural crosstalk between visual and association cortex regions. The same interplay produces the mental imagery and synesthesia experienced by meditators.

Such visionary phenomena point to psychedelics and meditation accessing transcendent domains of mind not limited by physicality.

Oneness Through Dissolution: Ego Death and Rebirth

Ultimately, psychedelics and meditation dismantle limiting identities, revealing that our true nature is boundless consciousness.

As Dr. Kaelen states, "This dissolution of the ego can lead to transcendental experiences of unity."

By temporarily erasing old programming, psychedelics and meditation enable you to return remapped and renewed. You bring back knowledge of life's limitless possibilities.

So whether traversing inner space with meditation or chemical catalysts, these practices share a transcendent direction homeward.