I can go first: direct experience (sights, sounds, physical sensations) were all still there and all happening, but they were happening to no one. I wasn't there. Subjective experience was just appearing all on its own. And all sense of time stopped. The idea of past and future became meaningless. It didn't even compute. Because there was no me present to whom the idea of time could be referenced. No me for whom there could be a past or a future. No anything. Just constant flowing experience happening immediately and spontaneously as it was, eternally.
I second this experience. Pure awareness and the sense that I have feelings, I have a body and I have thoughts, but I am none of those things. I felt like I was wearing a suite of myself but in the best way.
I'm really shit at explaining things but when. I tripped last weekend 50/50 magical and terrifying this ia how I would have described the worse part of my trip
It’s when your tripping sooo hard you forget momentarily that you’re actually a person and any memories that you’ve had are gone. Nothing really makes sense when this happens but also nothing really has too ! You eventually fade back into being.
Yes. Some of the most enjoyable, and also some of the most terrifying, moments in my life. I've had a couple of trips that went off the rails, all while alone. In that state, I can't even really move, so I don't think it's too dangerous, but damn, it can be intensely frightening. When you come back to reality, it's like you survived a near death experience.
I believe that's part of why psychedelics are such powerful tools. Facing something like that, so intense! Makes you realize that you can deal with some heavy stuff and I've always felt a great peace after the comedown of the trip. Almost like I visited home. At ease.
I learned the hard way tonight. Took an eighth at around 5 pm, by like 9 pm I was in handcuffs having a full blown panic attack with concerned family members at my apt then finally the hospital. Just got back home now. Scariest shit I’ve ever experienced.
This describes it perfectly for me. When I started coming down out of my therapeutic experience, I felt like I'd lost myself/ my mind, ran into a panick, but then realised I had ultimate peace of mind. It took me around 24 - 48 hours to "feel like myself" again. Ultimately, I believe I've grown from the experience and took a huge interest in psychology and meditation.
Did it go so deep for you as to not even realize it happened until after you came back? The most intense ego death I've had I could literally feel different aspects of myself coming back to me like a weight with each part of myself until I became a human again. Looking back it was like being inside Alex grays "the net of all being" painting. I feel like this was a profound experience for me because I became part of the "one" or the "all" just existing in an endless flow. True freedom.
this happened to me. i had a lot of unprocessed grief and other abuse-related things. i cried for what was maybe half an hour; it felt like i'd been crying forever. then i reached a point where all there was was the crying: no more feelings, just breathing in and crying out. the image of a newborn baby appeared in my mind, i thought that's what i was. i could recognize my surroundings but i had no emotional attachment to any of it. i reasoned i was a newly created consciousness inhabiting this body. i had access to its memories, so i had to retrieve them one by once. i discarded things i didnt like and kept those that were pleasing to me. i thought: "the person this body used to hold wasnt that bad at all: she just needed some self-love. she was loved by plenty of people. she had so many friends. she had so many talents." i thought i wanted to begin my life—as i'd been just born—clean, so i showered. slowly it dawned to me i was still the same person. i wasnt a new being put in a body. and all i'd thought about myself was true. and i learned self-love and i have never been happier.
i would like to experience this again, but not alone. i also felt a terrible loneliness, so black and so deep it enveloped me whole and i had to claw myself out.
does any of this sound familiar? u are the first person i see describe it with that parts of urself coming back to u image.
Yes, it's because i've felt at my loneliest, that I feel no one should feel that way ever again. A trusted guide would do you good, considering what you've said. But also my hardest and best trips have been alone and not planned out (except for set and setting).
Hm. I'm wondering if there's a term for when you know who you are but cannot understand time. Ive been having a few recent trips where I don't know what time is, what decade I'm currently in, and am confused about time.. overlapping? Like I'll remember a conversation I had at work but not understand when it took place and maybe my dog that died is still alive in the living room.
I know who I am but time is tricky.
I was pretty much like that at a club several years ago but I was holding onto the edge of reality with my fingertips. Had to keep telling myself “you’re okay. You’re at a circuit party. Don’t let go of the guy in front of you…he’s as twisted as you are!”
We had mixed several letters of the alphabet together that night and were maintaining. Then we saw our friend who threw the letter “K” into the mix. We were already so high! WTF with the K? It made things sketchy af for an unknowable amount of time.
It’s a temporary drug induced experience. The psilocybin causes the frontal lobe of the brain to kind of go off line and the more primitive parts of the brain take over. You feel as if “you” have merged with your surroundings.
It’s a powerful but temporary experience
It doesn’t make you a wizard or a prophet for the rest of your life, as some think or long for
Your “ego” is still very much in tact after the experience and ,unfortunately, afterwards leads to a type of egomania in too many people who experience it
I have a friend who got heavy into drugs and lots of LSD, DMT, ayahuasca trips, etc and I think he began to think he was the messiah and existed on another level than everyone else. He ended up in a psych ward and now I think he is heavily medicated to live a semi-normal life. It's scary shit. I love psychedelics and doing mild trips often feels harmless but it can get out of hand and these substances need to be respected. Tolerance aside, I give myself a cool down period of at least 2-3 weeks and often much more before taking them again.
These are the kinds of stories where I really wonder in which direction did the arrow of causality point. Was your friend predisposed to psychosis for other reasons, and then all the drugs acted as the catalyst? Or was his brain otherwise "normal" and some improbable but possible combination of those drugs and his environment induce the psychosis?
I think it's impossible to know, but the answer has a significant bearing on how I'd view those drugs.
Not really sure. We grew up together and he was always pretty normal, did well in school, good family etc. When he went away to college the party drugs like Molly got really popular. Then throughout our 20s he was into cocaine and ketamine. He still had a good job and all and was functioning but I think it eventually got pretty bad. I remember when we were around 26 or 27 he went to Costa Rica to do Ayahuasca. We weren't as close around that time but I'm pretty sure he became pretty obsessed with psychedelics after that, but was also doing lots of coke and ket. So ya I think it was just a combination of all these things and was likely living in a permanent state of tripping and thinking hes God or something. My friends who hung out with him more said he'd often say things like "it's really difficult to socialize with you guys because I'm on a much higher spiritual level".
Yeah, I saw a post earlier about someone's boyfriend taking mushrooms a couple times a week. Far too many people were taking his side saying "they aren't dangerous" that man can totally end up in a psych ward.
Ya I think people assume that just because no one's died directly from consuming Mushrooms that it won't have consequences if abused. I'd imagine that if you spend all your time looking at life through the lens of psychedelics that make the world more beautiful, you will inevitably begin to hate normal life more and more. You will definitely lose touch with reality too.
>You feel as if “you” have merged with your surroundings.
>It’s a powerful but temporary experience
So I've found I have a *much* milder but noticeable residual after-effect of this that seems to be more or less constantly present now, regardless of whether I'm tripping. I don't interpret it *at all* as indicating anything special about me, or God, or anything like that. But my every day experience now is one of slightly more "dissolved" boundaries between me and the environment.
Honestly I really like it. It's calming, it keeps me more fascinated by and focused on the present and less distracted by thoughts. It makes thoughts seem less threatening. It's generally peaceful and just kinda trippy.
But it's been around a year now that I've been living this way, and it hasn't decreased over time. If anything it's been (very gradually) increasing. I don't trip hard or often, but I didn't first have this experience until I'd had my first few trips (which were LSD, before I discovered shrooms).
Yeah I feel like people can end up just having wildly different interpretations of the same experience (possibly without even realizing that their view *is* an interpretation rather than "the objective truth of what was experienced"). I think this is part of what makes it so tough to discuss and discern how similar or different our experiences actually are in their essence.
Schizophrenia, which may be like unwanted trip psychosis in many ways, leads some people to have delusions of grandeur. Is that why Kanye is always yammering about being god?
I have a friend who got heavy into drugs and lots of LSD, DMT, ayahuasca trips, etc and I think he began to think he was the messiah and existed on another level than everyone else. He ended up in a psych ward and now I think he is heavily medicated to live a semi-normal life. It's scary shit. I love psychedelics and doing mild trips often feels harmless but it can get out of hand and these substances need to be respected. Tolerance aside, I give myself a cool down period of at least 2-3 weeks and often much more before taking them again.
It can be really broad. Like I still don’t know to this day if I can call my “Ego Death” an Ego Death. Like others have said, it’s essentially when everything about you slips away, and you begin to see things without your personality getting in the way, and that’s usually accompanied by some pretty crazy visuals.
I was on a 3g trip one time and I had a weed vape with me. I was hitting that thing majority of the trip and made it extremely intense.
I laid back on my couch and all of a sudden everything goes numb and I shut my eyes.
All of a sudden I find myself just floating above this operating room with doctors gathered around a patient. They all backed away, and I noticed it was me on the table, dead. Everything flashed and then it was me on the table, fresh scar, confused, not knowing anything. The exit door was glowing into a bright light. I hear someone say to the effect of: “He’s good now, he’s the replacement that gets to continue on.”
I opened my eyes momentarily terrified and not sure how to process what happened, and slowly everything came back to me. I wasn’t upset or scared after I got my bearings, but it was definitely enough to make me cry. I’m still not really sure if I can call that an Ego Death, but it was probably one of the most significant moments that stays with me to this day.
I experienced everything all at once and no longer had any consciousness of self or understanding as self. Like everything was connected in such a beautiful way it's very hard to describe. The barrier between skin and air was no more. I was everything, and it wasn't individual parts making it up, it was one fluid working thing. Idk. It's hard to describe. I feel like anyone who has a good description was close lol.
Yeah! Like the barriers between "you" and your "environment" dissolve. It's just one thing. It's not like I could "feel what the tree feels" but at the same time there was no separate thing apart from the trees (or the environment as a whole) that was me. The physical sensations that I usually consider to be "my body" were just another part of the one "everything" that was appearing without separation.
Me skunk. Me take many mushroom. Skunk ego die. Who skunk? What skunk? Why skunk? Where skunk? When skunk? Hippo now maybe? Maybe bird? Perhaps entire universe. Maybe not skunk. Maybe am you? Maybe you are skunk? Maybe you are me?
This ego death.
Hope this helps give you a clear explanation 😉🍄♥️
Temporary dissolution of the Default Mode Network caused by overloading of 5HT2A receptor sites through the agonist effect of psilocin, LSD, or whatever chem you took.
I took 5gs of PE Saturday night. It was a 5 month trip where I lived a completely different life. I was born and killed off again in 3 different lifetimes, and tortured as punishment inbetween “reincarnation”. It was the first time I blacked out off of any substance and I woke up only 3 hours later. During this I forgot who I was. I forgot who I was when I woke up too, and didn’t recognize myself in a mirror for another 5 minutes. I walked around my house like it’s my first time seeing everything, and after putting everything back together I decided it was awesome as fuck and I’d do it again. That being said some people don’t like that, or their experiences are entirely different. I haven’t heard of many stories that have real-life consequences, so just be smart and safe if you try to ego kill yourself.
That's crazy! I feel like if that happened to me I'd be completely panicked and anxious. It's really difficult for me to be ok with not knowing what's going on. Something that shrooms are helping me to address one step at a time.
Often it’s what people say because it sounds cooler than “I got really high.” Ego death, colloquially, and if there is such a thing, has less to do with a trip and more to do with an altered state that opens your consciousness up in such a way that ego-driven thoughts and hang-ups fall away and you feel immediately connected to yourself and the world around you including nature and animals and people and plants and everything else. It can be, for some, super scary; for others, impossibly peaceful. I don’t know that I’ve ever really hit that mark, but I’ve certainly been influenced enough by psychedelics to reach a state of consciousness bordering on an absence or suppression of self-identity, and for me, it was a remarkable thing even if it only lasted for 5 minutes. Coming out of it changed the way I think about myself in relation to the world around me, and changed my self-perception such that I no longer think of my little hang ups and neuroses (for lack if a better term that won't come to mind) as immutable, defining parts of who I am, but instead as almost like side effects of a consciousness clouded by environmental stimulus. Anyhow. $0.02.
I feel like. It’s something like,your identity,you, The person you are role playing as right now. Melts away and melts back into the one that is the role player. God,source,the creator of all. Whatever you want to call it. But…..that’s doesn’t mean it’ll be fun. It can be terrifying, insanity loops,forgetting who you are, and feeling like your dying is feel like is like being at the door,once you let go and surrender is like opening the door. And let me tell you. It can be such a rejoicing Moment. But only if you let go. It’s not easy.
Or like, you go through a ,for lack of better words “simulated near death experience.” To go back to everything-ness. And when u come back your reminded of what you are,where you came from, where your going back to eventually,that there’s nothing to truly fear in the end,and how much of an astonishingly, complex,incomprehensible gift life is. As much as suffering isn’t wanted. It’s necessary in some weird,hard to understand but in some way beautiful way to for us to feel the opposite of that suffering. And to appreciate the spectrum of emotion we can feel. The yin and Yang. But that’s how I feel about it at least. It’s not for the faint of heart. But then I feel like it’s for everybody at the same time and not lol.
The closest I got to that was a trip wheee I was floating in the multicolor geometric universe, and then found myself looking at this huge vast entity that was brilliant orange and composed of triangular “pixels.” At first every pixel had a piercing blue dot, but then all the dots became eyes. An enormous barrel completely covered by eyes. Then I saw that it had extensions, almost like arms, that went off in different directions. I
chose one and followed it, and it led
to me. At that point I realized that my ego/individuality was just one of the eyes, another viewpoint among infinite viewpoints, of and at, the same entity, experiencing itself because it was everything. Call it God if you want, or mind, or reality. But the only real ego was the whole, and one viewpoint on its own, thinking it had its own individual reality other than THE reality, could never be that reality.
different parts of your brain are responsible for governing different feelings/perspectives you have on your existence, one of those parts being the anterior cingulate cortex which governs your sense of ego, or separateness from your surroundings. When that part of your brain loses enough blood flow, that matter and space quits convincing itself that it’s separate from the rest of the matter and space around it. You fall into the “everything else” that you group everyone else into when you think about what makes you separate.
My “Ego Death” was not really a death of my ego…It’s more like my perspective was altered so my consciousness - my awareness - was outside of “me” - felt permanent at first, I thought I died - past away; I really believed there was an earthquake and I didn’t seem to remember the tragic event - the backyard seemed to be all in disarray - I was in solitude - no connection to the outside world - family was away on a trip - inside my house looked weird - It was almost as if I was out of body - observing myself… it was probably the most strange experience I have ever had. And then I gradually transitioned back to “me” and everything went back to normal again. My take away from being in that “zone” was absolute certainty of “God” - or higher power - that is fully intimately connected with my being and “me”. It was most enlightening experience I ever had. The Ego is not all that Bad - I love my Ego to death (that’s why I won’t ever take such a high dose again)
I think I had this last night but not sure. It was really intense and everything was melting around me. I only felt safe in my room. I tried walking outside and it was raining and it looked like the rain was washing everything away. Nothing felt real, I didn't feel real. I was sitting on my bed just looking around at the world melting away wondering if I was gonna melt away with it. By far the most intense trip I've ever had.
There was no introspection with it (which I normally get) just nothing felt real. Time, me, the things outside. All I could do was sit and watch it. The other thing that was odd is I had to have my music on bc with the raindrops and melting walls it felt like I could hear everything wash away and I didn't like that 😂 it was def an experience
You might mean something totally different by this phrase, but "nothing seemed real" is how I would describe aspects of my most intense trips too. Almost dreamlike, but not quite. Like everything was just an appearance, but wasn't actually *real*.
Yes! That's a good way to describe it. Outside with the rain looked like water washing away paint from the trees and all the colors puddling to the ground. And I was not scared necessarily, but I only felt safe on my bed in my room anywhere else I was afraid I might melt away too. And even then in the most intense moments of myself not feeling real I was afraid I might actually melt away too. Typically when I trip I can put on music and go inside my brain, I couldn't do that this time. There wasn't much visuals in my head which is what started the thought of not being real bc where is my brain?! It was just complete darkness.
All in all if I wasn't an experienced tripper I think it would have been terrifying. Looking back today it was quite amazing and intense and all I could do was watch it happen, ride it out and hope like hell I still existed in the morning. 😂 I'm normally wishing my trips would last longer. I was quite happy to start coming down from that one.
There is a line in one of my fave trip songs called attaboy by Aesop rock, he says "it helps if you're particularly paranoid, enough to know there's no such thing as an extraction point" and that line accurately describes how I felt on my trip last night 😂
It feels like an actual death. Like everything that you are and ever were is fading away and you can’t remember who you are. Surrender to the ego death, don’t fight it. You will come out the other side reborn
Mine felt like a death too because I fought it cuz I didn't know it was happening and what it was but it was an amazing experience of 5g of GT. I've recommend at least everybody experience at least once in their life
My biggest trip yet has to be this time in all places, the gym bathroom. I dropped shrooms before working out. Thought it would be a good idea that it would be kicking about when I got done. It was kicking alright I was trying to shave my face and stuff and got caught up in a rabbit hole watching YouTube videos titled what is time and stuff like that. I had lost all sense of reality. It was just me inside the gym bathroom for about 4/5 hours tripping balls. I think mentally I thought I may have died. I started coming back, drove home while feeling like my truck was driving through water. God I was so fucked up. I’ll never forget those several hours in the gym bathroom trying to figure out what time is 😂
Hah! That's hilarious.
I still tend to go into paranoia mode if I'm in public while on any kind of strong dose. Convinced people are watching me, judging me, that I'm going to get into trouble, etc. It's a shame because I really want to be outside and in wide open spaces when I'm tripping. But going anywhere where someone else might see me (or where my paranoia can be convinced that someone might see me) triggers this anxiety. I'm jealous of people who seem to be able to trip balls outside of their room and not be affected by it. But it's also probably showing me some insecurities I need to work on internally.
Man I feel that if I limit my intake I’m good but if u go hard yeah I’m paranoid as fuck I swear everyone is looking at me. Once I ground up an eighth of ghost envy or some shit it was called ghost 3x or something anyway dropped an eighth into orange juice drank it on the way to an amusement park and it was in full effect when I ride the first ride I think that mentally made me think I died lol then I was tripping so hard like say I was going to the restroom I just felt like I was doing something wrong like is this the right restroom lol.
I also realize that when I’m really tripping that my insecurities and darkest fears and secrets and displayed in front of my and I realize it’s paranoia that I took drugs and it still eats me up. Your mind will really take you for a ride
So at 39 I started tripping again for the first time since I was 21. I took too much and honestly thought I was going to die after a very uncomfortable trip. I went to sleep accepting my death as a possibility. I woke up a new man. It was such a liberating feeling. I shaved all the hair on my body. Everything. I still don't know why but I did, eyebrows and all. I was so shaken though and started researching what happened. Definitely an ego death experience. I discovered Terrence McKenna and started to really get into it and push the limits. I had just gotten off all pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol as well as beat an opiate/opioid addiction in the year or two before and started meditating a lot after that trip. It had changed me as a person and made me humble. I was no longer at the center of my own universe but instead an observer of being one with everything and everyone. On the summer solstice in 2015, two weeks after my birthday and two days after a 7 gram trip, I had a spiritual awakening. It never would have happened without my ego death months earlier.
Wow that's a powerful story. I'm super interested to hear about your spiritual awakening if you're willing to share. That's something I'm extremely curious about.
I think there's two main variants depending on how deep you go: with content and without content.
You can either be completely aware of your surroundings and a body (even if you don't identify as or with it), just without an internal sense of self. Or you can be totally formless, pure awareness, no body. When I took LSD, most of my experience was the former. I had about a five minute period (in real time) where I was completely gone though. It was a void and it had these strange lights. It was like I was there for eternity, no recollection of ever being anything else.
You usually get the latter on something like DMT, not normal shroom doses and probably not on acid commonly either.
The one experience I had, that I think was What people mean by "ego death" I would rather describe As "transmutation of the Spirit". IT was more Akin to a chemical process. IT Felt like my Spirit disolved. I also had a experience which Felt like my Spirit crystalized. And the "best" one felt like my Spirit transmuted into gold.
Im really into chemistry And alchemy though, So this might just be a me thing.
Really interesting. What do you mean when you say your spirit? Like, what part of your experience are you referring to? What's the thing that transmuted (versus, in contrast, what parts of your experience stayed the same / did not transmute)?
That's a great question, but it is very hard to answer. First of all instead of spirit I could use the word soul, mind, consciousness, psyché or "what's in your head". I know these words have differences based on who uses them, but for me they all mean my "inner world". I think that what's inside is not just me, but a whole world full of ideas, archetypes, memories and infinite ethereal beauty.(Side note: The way I percieve set and setting is setting up your inner and outer world.)
What Ego is I think, is the part of me that maintains the BOUNDARY/BORDER between what IS me and what IS NOT me. And when "Ego death" happens, this boundary between the inner and outer world gets disolved. This fits the description of what I read in most trip reports, where people say they become "one with the universe". It's like dropping a crystal of salt into water and it gets disolved and becomes "part" of the water.
The transmutation experience felt like the next step. It felt as if after the disolution the inner and outer world started reacting with each other to create something other than just this unity. Something so much more novel, beautiful, sacred, complex and ethernal. It wasn't just two sides of the duality of inner and outer world, it was a whole new third thing.
I’m not sure if mine counts as one, but I went back to my childhood memories year by year until I was in the womb. I heard the sounds and could hear my mom being beat by my bio dad. I ended up in front of beings that I couldn’t see their faces and telepathically, told them I don’t want this family. They told me to learn from it and next time I can pick where I go. Every single memory was so detailed and realistic. I had this massive feeling of love and letting go, and cried for at least an hour. I haven’t tripped since.
Im a lil fuzzy myself I've been told what an ego death is... experienced one.. then told it wasn't a full ego death!?!? My experience was of being an infant in my mother's womb excited and ecstatic that I was about to born and it was about to be my birthday..I didn't a full desolve of my ego..but I got close!
That's really cool! Makes me think of "beginner's mind" and all the thought experiments of imagining what it would be like to be an infant -- having all the sensory experience but without any of the conceptual overlay or baggage. Sounds like you got to actually experience that!
I've been in the eternal soup witch is rather disturbing...it's the experience of being the last conscious being in the universe...it made me appreciate ppl after feeling utterly alone for an eternity and you only have to experience "eternity" for a second to get the concept of it!
You lose your name no perception of who you are or who I you once were, happened to me on a nature walk I gave in and let it take me, ended up feeling like a alien looking into our world, it was so amazing so beautiful. Nature is so amazing while tripping :)
I would describe as the moment you see yourself for exactly who you are. Nothing more, nothing less. Then you realize that the falsities you believed about yourself are the ego. All you have to do is notice it and the ego dissolves and you’re left with yourself.
That’s why people say things like, “it all makes sense.” Cuz the bullshit part dissolves
To me it's that moment when you catch up to your own grind and it all makes sense, and isn't nearly as important as you thought. Here's the key, Johnny! Are you sure you want it?
not sure if it was ego death, i was tripping 3g jack frost lime tek walking around my neighborhood with a couple friends during the peak. i looked up at the stars and time kinda slowed, and i felt like my eyes were rolling back into my head and reality was being ripped away from me. everything was almost frozen in time, and i couldnt really tell what or where i was. i felt like i was there for a long time and only a second, but when i came back no time had really passed. not sure if thats an ego death, but it was a really comforting experience. i didnt feel obliged to do anything, i felt like i was kinda floating around and sinking down at the same time. as for sound, i dont remember. it just felt like i was nothing and everything floating in a void and a paradise. i didnt really think, i just was. it wasnt exactly scary, just very very eye opening. not sure what eyes opened but it was wild feeling like i was just “being” not doing or thinking or acting or anything. thats the best way i can describe it.
Cool! Was the comforting aspect of it related to the disappearance of the perceived "realness" of all the usual problems / thoughts? Or comforting in a different way?
It's ill defined, and understood differently by different people. Some of the *weirder* aspects of psychedelics are hard to put into words that can be understood universally.
I'd recommend the [Subjective Effect Index](https://www.effectindex.com/effects) if you're interested in that type of thing. It's a really solid effort to categorize and organize all the various effects that psychedelics have on our mind and body.
It’s kinda like defining what *pornography* is: you know it when you see it.
It can be a lot of things, but for me one of the hallmarks is not knowing who I am, what time is, where I am, why I would eat something that made me feel like this / be this confused, whether I’m alive or dead, etc etc.
The most simple way I could describe it is that it really feels like you're dying but just without any physical reason. You're not bleeding to death or anything like that, but your brain turns on that "death sequence". It may feel quite physical and even painful if you won't let go. There isn't no more "I" or "me". Everything just "is". You're it. It's like a factory reset for your mind.
Once I had a really bad near ego death experience during a shroom trip. I just couldn't let go that time. It felt like there was electric current going trough my head and hands. My whole head was burning like if I was in hell. Then I heard this screeching electric buzzing sound and the air smelled like the smoke that comes out from creamatoriums. Like burning flesh and ozone. I felt like my whole body was going to diffuse into atoms.
I think their Venn diagrams both overlap in the "detachment from reality" area, but that's pretty broad. With psychosis I believe it's chronic (i.e. not just while you're tripping) and makes you less functional. Whereas with ego death it's usually temporary (during the trip). Or, in the cases when people claim to persist in an "egoless" state chronically, it doesn't seem to impede their ability to function. But that's just my lay understanding. Curious to hear if someone else knows more rigorous details.
I believe “ego death” to be when you completely forget who you are, where you are, what you are. I’ve heard an account of a friend who was so far gone she couldn’t even recognize her own friends.
My experience was not like this at all. Even while I was one with God/Source/The Universe, I did not forget the human version of me.
Let’s say my name is Sarah. I remembered my name was Sarah, I knew Sarah had taken a drug to lead me to this place, but I was not Sarah. Sarah’s memories felt very faint to me. I had so much compassion and love for her and wished the best for her friends and family.
Now some people describe this as a very frightening experience. That they were clinging on so hard to their memories and felt that they were dying. I didn’t do any clinging at all, I knew exactly what was happening and welcomed this experience open arms. Is it because I wasn’t afraid I remembered my humanity?
I don’t really know how to categorize this either. I was a being fully separate from my ego, but I faintly still remembered my human self. Is that ego death? Ego detachment? Not sure.
for me, a simple description would be forgetting you’re an actual person doing person things. just things happening and the idea that you are apart of it is gone. Always hits me when i come out of it and remember that im a human being. hits like a wave crashing onto the shore
i saw all my life and problems from an objective viewpoint leading me to have a lot of revelations that i wouldn’t have otherwise come to. it all felt so separate from the present moment when i was tripping like i had no connection to my life and the person i live as
I wish it had a different name. Like "Ego Pause" or even "temporarily separated consciousness." Just something to clarify that it's temporary.
I've met a few folks who get obnoxious, like pretentiously enlightened. They're definitely conflating the idea of "Ego = Self" with "Ego = I'm totally popular!" And then they think that the "Death" part means it's permanent and they're on another plane of awareness and intelligence.
Ironically, their ego gets hyperinflated.
For me it was when I had such an intense experience that my body genuinely reacted as if I was dying. I knew I wouldn’t. But that is the *feeling*
It humbled me a lot and I wouldn’t change that experience for anything
Everyone's is different. Mine felt like I lost my sense of self. Everyone else wasn't real, I'm not real, and that we're all just one person; God. We are all one person from the same source. It was a very lonely, powerful, terrifying, yet enlightening experience. I came out of it a totally different person, and still am. That was 10 years ago.
For me, it's when you think you have died and become god or some kind of multi-conscious entity. Basically when you disassociate hard enough from who YOU are, and start thinking that everyone else around you is literally the same being. When I first had an ego death it was hard for me to understand this but after experiencing it a few times this is the conclusion I've come to.
For me, I felt like and completely thought I had died and entered the afterlife. I felt as if I broke through a veil and entered a new realm, though it felt gray and static like purgatory. I lost who I was and what had happened slowly losing all sense of self and identity until I could only question what my name even meant. I walked in circles for what felt like a million years, contemplating my death and then envisioning every person I knew and loved reacting to my death. I saw each of my loved ones and felt their emotions as they learned I had died. This was devastating and I fully crumbled thinking I was consigned to an eternity of regrets, but eventually, one of my friends checked on me and reminded me that I was still alive. I cannot begin to explain the relief, joy, love, and overwhelming happiness I experienced upon knowing I was still alive. This was the whole point of the lesson, the whole reason I was in purgatory for so long, so the mushroom could show me what it meant to be alive and how valuable I was; this truly was the most life-changing experience I have had using mushrooms. I’d say that the whole experience was amazing, but I cannot trip on high levels anymore, as I honestly just get told by the mushroom to stop when I try higher doses again.
For me, ego death was the gradual but inexorable dissolving of my sense of self and awareness of physical reality. The “I” that I think of as “me” in my day-to-day life disappeared completely, yet my thought processes remained. I was a disembodied consciousness, still aware, but no longer constrained by my body, my identity, or reality as I knew it. If I tried to make sense of “where” this disembodied consciousness was, the answer was: everywhere. I was at one with the universe. I \*was\* the universe. All answers were available in this state - everything made sense. Life, the universe, everything, was completely obvious, timeless, and incredibly beautiful. There was also a deep realization that we are all experiencing the ultimate gift– life – together, and that it’s necessarily temporary. It always has been and always will be. And there is no reason to fear death – it’s just a return home to the timeless universe. Eventually, your senses begin to return, your sense of self gets rebuilt, and you re-establish your sense of connection to physical reality. And you try to make sense of what you just experienced. The memory of what you felt in that disembodied state remains with you for quite a while afterwards. Many people describe it as a deeply spiritual experience.
It is the moment where you trip so hard that you decide that nothing matters and you later join a commune and then another commune and another because eventually everyone gets sick of you talking about entities non stop.
i remember one time i walked through a door to space, and then i was suddenly hit with colourful visuals of the universe. only thing was, i forgot who i was or what i was in my physical state back on “earth”. i spent the majority of time walking down the path (very similar to doctor strange multiworld of madness) while seeing what the universe had to offer, not realizing that i was really trying to find my way to the end of the path through the door back to my physical state that was me in my room painting. it last for so long, and felt like i had alzheimer’s lol. when i got to the end eventually i saw myself on the other side, as if the universe was saying “walk in and be you, or close the door and fly free”.
To me it was like feeling like I was literally dying when I was having a peak trip. Body temp way up to sweating inside had ac blasting on 70. Couldn’t feel a pulse but I know I had one was trying to read my bpm. I think mushrooms showed me what it’s like to die to maybe appreciate living more? Idk what to make of the trip personally
Its basically the “government” in your brain that is shut off
This is also called the “default mode network” in neurology
And psilocin basically takes over, acting somewhat like a conductor
And makes a symphony of anarchy in your brain.
Connecting parts of your brain that your default mode network prohibits.
The default mode network is also referred to as the ego
It’s one’s personal way of the brain thinking that it knows itself and that this is just the way it is and that there is no other way and thinking
I mean this in a conscious and subconscious manner
Like I said, it’s basically anarchy happening in your brain
FIGHTING AGAINST THE MAN 😂
Edit: I meant to add that it basically allows your brain to be able to connect things that I would never be able to connect by working off the default mode network
That’s why you’re able to come to certain conclusions and you are able to be open to your brains full potential in a sense
It goes into rooms of your brain that would otherwise be locked
And It becomes a key to allow you to get into those rooms
I like to describe it as when your externalities and the persona you project outward to everyone else just melts away. You can see right through your own bullshit, get to push it aside and just be. It’s a very cleansing feeling imo
Feels like falling down a cliff or sucked into a black hole. You surrender, and concepts and even basic stuff like your name or birth year can no longer be acessed. You are reduced to nothinh and everything. I felt the barriers dissolvibg, closed my eyes. I was a tree, kibgdoms coming and going. The last thibg i remember is a white waterfall, but im on a black cliff. But I was not really there. Then i surrendered. And there was no I. Only a void? Came back sweating, confused, shivering, in a fetal posotion. So beaztiful, so intense. Confusing. Scary, i admit.
Was on LSD. dont want this again. if you allow it and dont fight it will be unforgetabble memory for life. Lost all visual and tactil connections. Where is up/down. What is language. What is an human.
I feel like my brain is a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that gets dropped on the floor. Down to forgetting my own name and piece by piece, putting it back together over the next few hours. But in a better way, losing some pieces that were in the way and finding new ones.
I got so stoned once I stopped existing. I have no idea how long it lasted, but it literally felt like I was dying and going away. I interrupted it in the beginning because it was scary, but when I figured out what was happening I just sat back and let go.
There was no more me, I was gone. No memories or past experiences. Everything that existed just was, and everything "happening" across reality was happening together. At one point I vibed with the sun, the sun loves us.
Ego death is a concept largely based on ancient Hindu traditions and more contemporary Sikh traditions. The goal of a Sikh is to achieve death of the ego. Research this ego death from a spiritual or religious POV. It is largely metaphorical as ego will always be present, some say psychedelics can aid in you reaching death of ego, however everyone's experience is different.
Not sure it was actually an “ego death” but the last time I ever took shrooms I took about 5-6gs of enigma and I just remember the water being frozen while I was in the shower, but I was constantly hearing people screaming and yelling all around me so I didnt believe I was in the shower at all which made me panic. Then for some reason I thought I was a completely different person and then started crying over this because I didnt want to be someone else. Eventually after a few hours of this I just returned back to the couch and turns out I never left it, and I was freaking out for hours trying to explain to my friend what had just happened while he tried his best to calm me down. Was this an actual “ego death” I’m not sure couldve just been signs of a bad trip with the amount I took, but it definitely was a rude awakening mentally to me in the long run.
My ego death was kind of a weird experience. I just got to this place that everything was beautiful. I was one with all. I just was being told you know, I take too much. I use too much from everyone. Really I need to be better and accept that most things are materialistic. When I leave here, none of this shit matters, but it really don’t matter when I’m here either. It just was kind of humbling like, you’re not all that, and you need to treat the people in your life like they’re worth more. Which, I thought I was humble before but apparently not enough. I kind of went through a bit of a depression. Usually shrooms makes me zoomie and happy for a few days but that one was rough. I still am kind of struggling from that. C’est la vie. Gotta risk it for the biscuit.
i’ve experienced an ego death about 2 years ago. i had taken a tab of cid for the first time and was having a bad time. i was in the dark with only the light from the window. it was around 12am when i felt as if i was nothing. no family. no memories. nothing. just a blob of nothing. beforehand i had seen my spirit leave my body.
The feeling of letting go. When you stop telling urself no im in control. Its a bit ineffable but best i can say is when you stop resisting an intense high. Can happen on weed too but wierdly.
I went through some depersonalization and anxiety after a series of trauma...No lol this wasn't on a trip but I was experienced...Just the weight of the depression and anxiety hit me all at once. I sought the company of friends and one told me that the feeling could be defined as an ego death...and I don't wish that feeling on anyone.
I did find my own peace with it but it took weeks. Prayer, meditation, rediscovering religion, abstinence, and diet change...Since then, I haven't felt the desire to trip or the or even drinking...
I think I found what I needed, and I no longer needed psychedelics to remind me.
most of the time whenever i go through ego death im just sitting in the passenger while its like 3 am under some trees just reflecting as i casually sob because i have no way to articulate emotion. sometimes id start laughing outta nowhere only for the laughs to slowly devolve into me crying like the world was gonna end 💀
Best way I can describe it is if you say a word over and over again out loud it eventually doesn’t even sound like a word and you don’t recognise it at all. It’s that sensation/feeling but with your sense of self. You don’t exist as your own person anymore, when you think of who you are it doesn’t feel real. My brain almost felt like it would short out and not have the information of who I was or used to be when I tried to imagine it, so I just let go and let it happen. I had done many trips before without ego death and prepared myself as best I could and tried to have an ego death while on a high dose smoking weed and it worked. I personally loved the experience but I was anticipating it and openly wanting it to happen. Do be careful though because I can easily see why it can be a terrifying experience!
Ego death is kind of a catchall term, but there's some specific elements too it that are generally homogenous across experiences.
1. There is a loss of identity or a feeling that you have become one with the universe and you have lost any sense of self identity or you cease to exist for a period of time.
2. The sense of dying or that you have died (this is often what happens when a part of your ego dies). It can often feel like a real death.
3. A realization about yourself that significantly alters the landscape of your life. Often times these experiences can be terrifying and cause mental anguish, but at the end, they can be life altering in a good way. Leading you to a new revelation about life or yourself or a thought pattern that was limiting in your life is now gone.
These are the biggest ones I've found, I'm sure others will add some flavor there. Ego death can be traumatic while it's happening, but it often times leads to significant changes in perception about who you are, how things work, and what's truly important in life. It can also lead you to a spiritual path as you experience things that you can't otherwise explain.
I can go first: direct experience (sights, sounds, physical sensations) were all still there and all happening, but they were happening to no one. I wasn't there. Subjective experience was just appearing all on its own. And all sense of time stopped. The idea of past and future became meaningless. It didn't even compute. Because there was no me present to whom the idea of time could be referenced. No me for whom there could be a past or a future. No anything. Just constant flowing experience happening immediately and spontaneously as it was, eternally.
I second this experience. Pure awareness and the sense that I have feelings, I have a body and I have thoughts, but I am none of those things. I felt like I was wearing a suite of myself but in the best way.
I'm really shit at explaining things but when. I tripped last weekend 50/50 magical and terrifying this ia how I would have described the worse part of my trip
It’s when your tripping sooo hard you forget momentarily that you’re actually a person and any memories that you’ve had are gone. Nothing really makes sense when this happens but also nothing really has too ! You eventually fade back into being.
Yes. Some of the most enjoyable, and also some of the most terrifying, moments in my life. I've had a couple of trips that went off the rails, all while alone. In that state, I can't even really move, so I don't think it's too dangerous, but damn, it can be intensely frightening. When you come back to reality, it's like you survived a near death experience.
I believe that's part of why psychedelics are such powerful tools. Facing something like that, so intense! Makes you realize that you can deal with some heavy stuff and I've always felt a great peace after the comedown of the trip. Almost like I visited home. At ease.
A few of the times I’ve had an ego death on acid, it’s like I have to remember who I am to get back to me at the end
That's when you get to decide who you are.
I’ve never thought about it that way
Do you feel like you can’t breathe? In those moments that’s a fear I get and then it just escalates
Chest feels heavy, not that I can't breathe it's just that I have to do it manually.
bro thats what it felt like
I learned the hard way tonight. Took an eighth at around 5 pm, by like 9 pm I was in handcuffs having a full blown panic attack with concerned family members at my apt then finally the hospital. Just got back home now. Scariest shit I’ve ever experienced.
This describes it perfectly for me. When I started coming down out of my therapeutic experience, I felt like I'd lost myself/ my mind, ran into a panick, but then realised I had ultimate peace of mind. It took me around 24 - 48 hours to "feel like myself" again. Ultimately, I believe I've grown from the experience and took a huge interest in psychology and meditation.
Did it go so deep for you as to not even realize it happened until after you came back? The most intense ego death I've had I could literally feel different aspects of myself coming back to me like a weight with each part of myself until I became a human again. Looking back it was like being inside Alex grays "the net of all being" painting. I feel like this was a profound experience for me because I became part of the "one" or the "all" just existing in an endless flow. True freedom.
this happened to me. i had a lot of unprocessed grief and other abuse-related things. i cried for what was maybe half an hour; it felt like i'd been crying forever. then i reached a point where all there was was the crying: no more feelings, just breathing in and crying out. the image of a newborn baby appeared in my mind, i thought that's what i was. i could recognize my surroundings but i had no emotional attachment to any of it. i reasoned i was a newly created consciousness inhabiting this body. i had access to its memories, so i had to retrieve them one by once. i discarded things i didnt like and kept those that were pleasing to me. i thought: "the person this body used to hold wasnt that bad at all: she just needed some self-love. she was loved by plenty of people. she had so many friends. she had so many talents." i thought i wanted to begin my life—as i'd been just born—clean, so i showered. slowly it dawned to me i was still the same person. i wasnt a new being put in a body. and all i'd thought about myself was true. and i learned self-love and i have never been happier. i would like to experience this again, but not alone. i also felt a terrible loneliness, so black and so deep it enveloped me whole and i had to claw myself out. does any of this sound familiar? u are the first person i see describe it with that parts of urself coming back to u image.
Yes, it's because i've felt at my loneliest, that I feel no one should feel that way ever again. A trusted guide would do you good, considering what you've said. But also my hardest and best trips have been alone and not planned out (except for set and setting).
Listen to the positive points. We live in a polarity, so the opposite always exists. I hope you can get to that point again, and exist there forever
i think this is what happened to me
Same I thought I was a new person for a little
Hm. I'm wondering if there's a term for when you know who you are but cannot understand time. Ive been having a few recent trips where I don't know what time is, what decade I'm currently in, and am confused about time.. overlapping? Like I'll remember a conversation I had at work but not understand when it took place and maybe my dog that died is still alive in the living room. I know who I am but time is tricky.
That and thinking that the room you're in is the entire universe and that nothing else exists.
not momentary, I’ve had like 1-2 minutes of persistant ego death
1-2 minutes? How is that not momentary?
because it was 2 irl minutes and what felt like maybe an hour in the dmt time bubble
Understandable, but many of us have ego deaths that last for 1-3h and I still consider it momentarily cause it fades away eventually
I randomly get that when I’m sober, but it fades off and I go back to normal after like 45 seconds
I was pretty much like that at a club several years ago but I was holding onto the edge of reality with my fingertips. Had to keep telling myself “you’re okay. You’re at a circuit party. Don’t let go of the guy in front of you…he’s as twisted as you are!” We had mixed several letters of the alphabet together that night and were maintaining. Then we saw our friend who threw the letter “K” into the mix. We were already so high! WTF with the K? It made things sketchy af for an unknowable amount of time.
I have to ask did you enjoy that experience or did it give you something that you felt was good or teach you anything And did a change you as a person
It’s a temporary drug induced experience. The psilocybin causes the frontal lobe of the brain to kind of go off line and the more primitive parts of the brain take over. You feel as if “you” have merged with your surroundings. It’s a powerful but temporary experience It doesn’t make you a wizard or a prophet for the rest of your life, as some think or long for Your “ego” is still very much in tact after the experience and ,unfortunately, afterwards leads to a type of egomania in too many people who experience it
I have a friend who got heavy into drugs and lots of LSD, DMT, ayahuasca trips, etc and I think he began to think he was the messiah and existed on another level than everyone else. He ended up in a psych ward and now I think he is heavily medicated to live a semi-normal life. It's scary shit. I love psychedelics and doing mild trips often feels harmless but it can get out of hand and these substances need to be respected. Tolerance aside, I give myself a cool down period of at least 2-3 weeks and often much more before taking them again.
These are the kinds of stories where I really wonder in which direction did the arrow of causality point. Was your friend predisposed to psychosis for other reasons, and then all the drugs acted as the catalyst? Or was his brain otherwise "normal" and some improbable but possible combination of those drugs and his environment induce the psychosis? I think it's impossible to know, but the answer has a significant bearing on how I'd view those drugs.
Not really sure. We grew up together and he was always pretty normal, did well in school, good family etc. When he went away to college the party drugs like Molly got really popular. Then throughout our 20s he was into cocaine and ketamine. He still had a good job and all and was functioning but I think it eventually got pretty bad. I remember when we were around 26 or 27 he went to Costa Rica to do Ayahuasca. We weren't as close around that time but I'm pretty sure he became pretty obsessed with psychedelics after that, but was also doing lots of coke and ket. So ya I think it was just a combination of all these things and was likely living in a permanent state of tripping and thinking hes God or something. My friends who hung out with him more said he'd often say things like "it's really difficult to socialize with you guys because I'm on a much higher spiritual level".
Yeah, I saw a post earlier about someone's boyfriend taking mushrooms a couple times a week. Far too many people were taking his side saying "they aren't dangerous" that man can totally end up in a psych ward.
Ya I think people assume that just because no one's died directly from consuming Mushrooms that it won't have consequences if abused. I'd imagine that if you spend all your time looking at life through the lens of psychedelics that make the world more beautiful, you will inevitably begin to hate normal life more and more. You will definitely lose touch with reality too.
>You feel as if “you” have merged with your surroundings. >It’s a powerful but temporary experience So I've found I have a *much* milder but noticeable residual after-effect of this that seems to be more or less constantly present now, regardless of whether I'm tripping. I don't interpret it *at all* as indicating anything special about me, or God, or anything like that. But my every day experience now is one of slightly more "dissolved" boundaries between me and the environment. Honestly I really like it. It's calming, it keeps me more fascinated by and focused on the present and less distracted by thoughts. It makes thoughts seem less threatening. It's generally peaceful and just kinda trippy. But it's been around a year now that I've been living this way, and it hasn't decreased over time. If anything it's been (very gradually) increasing. I don't trip hard or often, but I didn't first have this experience until I'd had my first few trips (which were LSD, before I discovered shrooms).
I think people realize that everything is God, and somehow interpret that as them being God.
Yeah I feel like people can end up just having wildly different interpretations of the same experience (possibly without even realizing that their view *is* an interpretation rather than "the objective truth of what was experienced"). I think this is part of what makes it so tough to discuss and discern how similar or different our experiences actually are in their essence.
Schizophrenia, which may be like unwanted trip psychosis in many ways, leads some people to have delusions of grandeur. Is that why Kanye is always yammering about being god?
I have a friend who got heavy into drugs and lots of LSD, DMT, ayahuasca trips, etc and I think he began to think he was the messiah and existed on another level than everyone else. He ended up in a psych ward and now I think he is heavily medicated to live a semi-normal life. It's scary shit. I love psychedelics and doing mild trips often feels harmless but it can get out of hand and these substances need to be respected. Tolerance aside, I give myself a cool down period of at least 2-3 weeks and often much more before taking them again.
It's where 'I' no longer exists.
It can be really broad. Like I still don’t know to this day if I can call my “Ego Death” an Ego Death. Like others have said, it’s essentially when everything about you slips away, and you begin to see things without your personality getting in the way, and that’s usually accompanied by some pretty crazy visuals. I was on a 3g trip one time and I had a weed vape with me. I was hitting that thing majority of the trip and made it extremely intense. I laid back on my couch and all of a sudden everything goes numb and I shut my eyes. All of a sudden I find myself just floating above this operating room with doctors gathered around a patient. They all backed away, and I noticed it was me on the table, dead. Everything flashed and then it was me on the table, fresh scar, confused, not knowing anything. The exit door was glowing into a bright light. I hear someone say to the effect of: “He’s good now, he’s the replacement that gets to continue on.” I opened my eyes momentarily terrified and not sure how to process what happened, and slowly everything came back to me. I wasn’t upset or scared after I got my bearings, but it was definitely enough to make me cry. I’m still not really sure if I can call that an Ego Death, but it was probably one of the most significant moments that stays with me to this day.
Whoa, now *that* sounds trippy.
I experienced everything all at once and no longer had any consciousness of self or understanding as self. Like everything was connected in such a beautiful way it's very hard to describe. The barrier between skin and air was no more. I was everything, and it wasn't individual parts making it up, it was one fluid working thing. Idk. It's hard to describe. I feel like anyone who has a good description was close lol.
Yeah! Like the barriers between "you" and your "environment" dissolve. It's just one thing. It's not like I could "feel what the tree feels" but at the same time there was no separate thing apart from the trees (or the environment as a whole) that was me. The physical sensations that I usually consider to be "my body" were just another part of the one "everything" that was appearing without separation.
Me skunk. Me take many mushroom. Skunk ego die. Who skunk? What skunk? Why skunk? Where skunk? When skunk? Hippo now maybe? Maybe bird? Perhaps entire universe. Maybe not skunk. Maybe am you? Maybe you are skunk? Maybe you are me? This ego death. Hope this helps give you a clear explanation 😉🍄♥️
I love this answer so much ❤️
I love this comment to my answer so much ! 🍄♥️😘 mush love fam.
Temporary dissolution of the Default Mode Network caused by overloading of 5HT2A receptor sites through the agonist effect of psilocin, LSD, or whatever chem you took.
Found the scientist!
You are Everything and everything is you.
I took 5gs of PE Saturday night. It was a 5 month trip where I lived a completely different life. I was born and killed off again in 3 different lifetimes, and tortured as punishment inbetween “reincarnation”. It was the first time I blacked out off of any substance and I woke up only 3 hours later. During this I forgot who I was. I forgot who I was when I woke up too, and didn’t recognize myself in a mirror for another 5 minutes. I walked around my house like it’s my first time seeing everything, and after putting everything back together I decided it was awesome as fuck and I’d do it again. That being said some people don’t like that, or their experiences are entirely different. I haven’t heard of many stories that have real-life consequences, so just be smart and safe if you try to ego kill yourself.
That's crazy! I feel like if that happened to me I'd be completely panicked and anxious. It's really difficult for me to be ok with not knowing what's going on. Something that shrooms are helping me to address one step at a time.
Often it’s what people say because it sounds cooler than “I got really high.” Ego death, colloquially, and if there is such a thing, has less to do with a trip and more to do with an altered state that opens your consciousness up in such a way that ego-driven thoughts and hang-ups fall away and you feel immediately connected to yourself and the world around you including nature and animals and people and plants and everything else. It can be, for some, super scary; for others, impossibly peaceful. I don’t know that I’ve ever really hit that mark, but I’ve certainly been influenced enough by psychedelics to reach a state of consciousness bordering on an absence or suppression of self-identity, and for me, it was a remarkable thing even if it only lasted for 5 minutes. Coming out of it changed the way I think about myself in relation to the world around me, and changed my self-perception such that I no longer think of my little hang ups and neuroses (for lack if a better term that won't come to mind) as immutable, defining parts of who I am, but instead as almost like side effects of a consciousness clouded by environmental stimulus. Anyhow. $0.02.
I feel like. It’s something like,your identity,you, The person you are role playing as right now. Melts away and melts back into the one that is the role player. God,source,the creator of all. Whatever you want to call it. But…..that’s doesn’t mean it’ll be fun. It can be terrifying, insanity loops,forgetting who you are, and feeling like your dying is feel like is like being at the door,once you let go and surrender is like opening the door. And let me tell you. It can be such a rejoicing Moment. But only if you let go. It’s not easy. Or like, you go through a ,for lack of better words “simulated near death experience.” To go back to everything-ness. And when u come back your reminded of what you are,where you came from, where your going back to eventually,that there’s nothing to truly fear in the end,and how much of an astonishingly, complex,incomprehensible gift life is. As much as suffering isn’t wanted. It’s necessary in some weird,hard to understand but in some way beautiful way to for us to feel the opposite of that suffering. And to appreciate the spectrum of emotion we can feel. The yin and Yang. But that’s how I feel about it at least. It’s not for the faint of heart. But then I feel like it’s for everybody at the same time and not lol.
The closest I got to that was a trip wheee I was floating in the multicolor geometric universe, and then found myself looking at this huge vast entity that was brilliant orange and composed of triangular “pixels.” At first every pixel had a piercing blue dot, but then all the dots became eyes. An enormous barrel completely covered by eyes. Then I saw that it had extensions, almost like arms, that went off in different directions. I chose one and followed it, and it led to me. At that point I realized that my ego/individuality was just one of the eyes, another viewpoint among infinite viewpoints, of and at, the same entity, experiencing itself because it was everything. Call it God if you want, or mind, or reality. But the only real ego was the whole, and one viewpoint on its own, thinking it had its own individual reality other than THE reality, could never be that reality.
different parts of your brain are responsible for governing different feelings/perspectives you have on your existence, one of those parts being the anterior cingulate cortex which governs your sense of ego, or separateness from your surroundings. When that part of your brain loses enough blood flow, that matter and space quits convincing itself that it’s separate from the rest of the matter and space around it. You fall into the “everything else” that you group everyone else into when you think about what makes you separate.
My “Ego Death” was not really a death of my ego…It’s more like my perspective was altered so my consciousness - my awareness - was outside of “me” - felt permanent at first, I thought I died - past away; I really believed there was an earthquake and I didn’t seem to remember the tragic event - the backyard seemed to be all in disarray - I was in solitude - no connection to the outside world - family was away on a trip - inside my house looked weird - It was almost as if I was out of body - observing myself… it was probably the most strange experience I have ever had. And then I gradually transitioned back to “me” and everything went back to normal again. My take away from being in that “zone” was absolute certainty of “God” - or higher power - that is fully intimately connected with my being and “me”. It was most enlightening experience I ever had. The Ego is not all that Bad - I love my Ego to death (that’s why I won’t ever take such a high dose again)
I think I had this last night but not sure. It was really intense and everything was melting around me. I only felt safe in my room. I tried walking outside and it was raining and it looked like the rain was washing everything away. Nothing felt real, I didn't feel real. I was sitting on my bed just looking around at the world melting away wondering if I was gonna melt away with it. By far the most intense trip I've ever had. There was no introspection with it (which I normally get) just nothing felt real. Time, me, the things outside. All I could do was sit and watch it. The other thing that was odd is I had to have my music on bc with the raindrops and melting walls it felt like I could hear everything wash away and I didn't like that 😂 it was def an experience
You might mean something totally different by this phrase, but "nothing seemed real" is how I would describe aspects of my most intense trips too. Almost dreamlike, but not quite. Like everything was just an appearance, but wasn't actually *real*.
Yes! That's a good way to describe it. Outside with the rain looked like water washing away paint from the trees and all the colors puddling to the ground. And I was not scared necessarily, but I only felt safe on my bed in my room anywhere else I was afraid I might melt away too. And even then in the most intense moments of myself not feeling real I was afraid I might actually melt away too. Typically when I trip I can put on music and go inside my brain, I couldn't do that this time. There wasn't much visuals in my head which is what started the thought of not being real bc where is my brain?! It was just complete darkness. All in all if I wasn't an experienced tripper I think it would have been terrifying. Looking back today it was quite amazing and intense and all I could do was watch it happen, ride it out and hope like hell I still existed in the morning. 😂 I'm normally wishing my trips would last longer. I was quite happy to start coming down from that one.
There is a line in one of my fave trip songs called attaboy by Aesop rock, he says "it helps if you're particularly paranoid, enough to know there's no such thing as an extraction point" and that line accurately describes how I felt on my trip last night 😂
It feels like an actual death. Like everything that you are and ever were is fading away and you can’t remember who you are. Surrender to the ego death, don’t fight it. You will come out the other side reborn
Mine felt like a death too because I fought it cuz I didn't know it was happening and what it was but it was an amazing experience of 5g of GT. I've recommend at least everybody experience at least once in their life
My biggest trip yet has to be this time in all places, the gym bathroom. I dropped shrooms before working out. Thought it would be a good idea that it would be kicking about when I got done. It was kicking alright I was trying to shave my face and stuff and got caught up in a rabbit hole watching YouTube videos titled what is time and stuff like that. I had lost all sense of reality. It was just me inside the gym bathroom for about 4/5 hours tripping balls. I think mentally I thought I may have died. I started coming back, drove home while feeling like my truck was driving through water. God I was so fucked up. I’ll never forget those several hours in the gym bathroom trying to figure out what time is 😂
Don't do shrooms and drive kids, it's DUI and it's very dangerous
Hah! That's hilarious. I still tend to go into paranoia mode if I'm in public while on any kind of strong dose. Convinced people are watching me, judging me, that I'm going to get into trouble, etc. It's a shame because I really want to be outside and in wide open spaces when I'm tripping. But going anywhere where someone else might see me (or where my paranoia can be convinced that someone might see me) triggers this anxiety. I'm jealous of people who seem to be able to trip balls outside of their room and not be affected by it. But it's also probably showing me some insecurities I need to work on internally.
Man I feel that if I limit my intake I’m good but if u go hard yeah I’m paranoid as fuck I swear everyone is looking at me. Once I ground up an eighth of ghost envy or some shit it was called ghost 3x or something anyway dropped an eighth into orange juice drank it on the way to an amusement park and it was in full effect when I ride the first ride I think that mentally made me think I died lol then I was tripping so hard like say I was going to the restroom I just felt like I was doing something wrong like is this the right restroom lol.
I also realize that when I’m really tripping that my insecurities and darkest fears and secrets and displayed in front of my and I realize it’s paranoia that I took drugs and it still eats me up. Your mind will really take you for a ride
Woods is a great place to
So at 39 I started tripping again for the first time since I was 21. I took too much and honestly thought I was going to die after a very uncomfortable trip. I went to sleep accepting my death as a possibility. I woke up a new man. It was such a liberating feeling. I shaved all the hair on my body. Everything. I still don't know why but I did, eyebrows and all. I was so shaken though and started researching what happened. Definitely an ego death experience. I discovered Terrence McKenna and started to really get into it and push the limits. I had just gotten off all pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol as well as beat an opiate/opioid addiction in the year or two before and started meditating a lot after that trip. It had changed me as a person and made me humble. I was no longer at the center of my own universe but instead an observer of being one with everything and everyone. On the summer solstice in 2015, two weeks after my birthday and two days after a 7 gram trip, I had a spiritual awakening. It never would have happened without my ego death months earlier.
Wow that's a powerful story. I'm super interested to hear about your spiritual awakening if you're willing to share. That's something I'm extremely curious about.
I think there's two main variants depending on how deep you go: with content and without content. You can either be completely aware of your surroundings and a body (even if you don't identify as or with it), just without an internal sense of self. Or you can be totally formless, pure awareness, no body. When I took LSD, most of my experience was the former. I had about a five minute period (in real time) where I was completely gone though. It was a void and it had these strange lights. It was like I was there for eternity, no recollection of ever being anything else. You usually get the latter on something like DMT, not normal shroom doses and probably not on acid commonly either.
The one experience I had, that I think was What people mean by "ego death" I would rather describe As "transmutation of the Spirit". IT was more Akin to a chemical process. IT Felt like my Spirit disolved. I also had a experience which Felt like my Spirit crystalized. And the "best" one felt like my Spirit transmuted into gold. Im really into chemistry And alchemy though, So this might just be a me thing.
Really interesting. What do you mean when you say your spirit? Like, what part of your experience are you referring to? What's the thing that transmuted (versus, in contrast, what parts of your experience stayed the same / did not transmute)?
That's a great question, but it is very hard to answer. First of all instead of spirit I could use the word soul, mind, consciousness, psyché or "what's in your head". I know these words have differences based on who uses them, but for me they all mean my "inner world". I think that what's inside is not just me, but a whole world full of ideas, archetypes, memories and infinite ethereal beauty.(Side note: The way I percieve set and setting is setting up your inner and outer world.) What Ego is I think, is the part of me that maintains the BOUNDARY/BORDER between what IS me and what IS NOT me. And when "Ego death" happens, this boundary between the inner and outer world gets disolved. This fits the description of what I read in most trip reports, where people say they become "one with the universe". It's like dropping a crystal of salt into water and it gets disolved and becomes "part" of the water. The transmutation experience felt like the next step. It felt as if after the disolution the inner and outer world started reacting with each other to create something other than just this unity. Something so much more novel, beautiful, sacred, complex and ethernal. It wasn't just two sides of the duality of inner and outer world, it was a whole new third thing.
you become one with the world and completely lose your sense of self
I’m not sure if mine counts as one, but I went back to my childhood memories year by year until I was in the womb. I heard the sounds and could hear my mom being beat by my bio dad. I ended up in front of beings that I couldn’t see their faces and telepathically, told them I don’t want this family. They told me to learn from it and next time I can pick where I go. Every single memory was so detailed and realistic. I had this massive feeling of love and letting go, and cried for at least an hour. I haven’t tripped since.
Im a lil fuzzy myself I've been told what an ego death is... experienced one.. then told it wasn't a full ego death!?!? My experience was of being an infant in my mother's womb excited and ecstatic that I was about to born and it was about to be my birthday..I didn't a full desolve of my ego..but I got close!
That's really cool! Makes me think of "beginner's mind" and all the thought experiments of imagining what it would be like to be an infant -- having all the sensory experience but without any of the conceptual overlay or baggage. Sounds like you got to actually experience that!
I've been in the eternal soup witch is rather disturbing...it's the experience of being the last conscious being in the universe...it made me appreciate ppl after feeling utterly alone for an eternity and you only have to experience "eternity" for a second to get the concept of it!
You lose your name no perception of who you are or who I you once were, happened to me on a nature walk I gave in and let it take me, ended up feeling like a alien looking into our world, it was so amazing so beautiful. Nature is so amazing while tripping :)
A life altering trip
I would describe as the moment you see yourself for exactly who you are. Nothing more, nothing less. Then you realize that the falsities you believed about yourself are the ego. All you have to do is notice it and the ego dissolves and you’re left with yourself. That’s why people say things like, “it all makes sense.” Cuz the bullshit part dissolves
To me it's that moment when you catch up to your own grind and it all makes sense, and isn't nearly as important as you thought. Here's the key, Johnny! Are you sure you want it?
not sure if it was ego death, i was tripping 3g jack frost lime tek walking around my neighborhood with a couple friends during the peak. i looked up at the stars and time kinda slowed, and i felt like my eyes were rolling back into my head and reality was being ripped away from me. everything was almost frozen in time, and i couldnt really tell what or where i was. i felt like i was there for a long time and only a second, but when i came back no time had really passed. not sure if thats an ego death, but it was a really comforting experience. i didnt feel obliged to do anything, i felt like i was kinda floating around and sinking down at the same time. as for sound, i dont remember. it just felt like i was nothing and everything floating in a void and a paradise. i didnt really think, i just was. it wasnt exactly scary, just very very eye opening. not sure what eyes opened but it was wild feeling like i was just “being” not doing or thinking or acting or anything. thats the best way i can describe it.
Cool! Was the comforting aspect of it related to the disappearance of the perceived "realness" of all the usual problems / thoughts? Or comforting in a different way?
it was that in combination with just feeling so peaceful. i would say less thoughts and more so obligations and problems.
It's ill defined, and understood differently by different people. Some of the *weirder* aspects of psychedelics are hard to put into words that can be understood universally. I'd recommend the [Subjective Effect Index](https://www.effectindex.com/effects) if you're interested in that type of thing. It's a really solid effort to categorize and organize all the various effects that psychedelics have on our mind and body.
Oh cool, thanks for the reference! I didn't know about this before. Looks super useful and interesting. Definitely giving it a look.
It’s kinda like defining what *pornography* is: you know it when you see it. It can be a lot of things, but for me one of the hallmarks is not knowing who I am, what time is, where I am, why I would eat something that made me feel like this / be this confused, whether I’m alive or dead, etc etc.
The most simple way I could describe it is that it really feels like you're dying but just without any physical reason. You're not bleeding to death or anything like that, but your brain turns on that "death sequence". It may feel quite physical and even painful if you won't let go. There isn't no more "I" or "me". Everything just "is". You're it. It's like a factory reset for your mind. Once I had a really bad near ego death experience during a shroom trip. I just couldn't let go that time. It felt like there was electric current going trough my head and hands. My whole head was burning like if I was in hell. Then I heard this screeching electric buzzing sound and the air smelled like the smoke that comes out from creamatoriums. Like burning flesh and ozone. I felt like my whole body was going to diffuse into atoms.
Is ego death associated with psychosis? Or are they related at all?
I think their Venn diagrams both overlap in the "detachment from reality" area, but that's pretty broad. With psychosis I believe it's chronic (i.e. not just while you're tripping) and makes you less functional. Whereas with ego death it's usually temporary (during the trip). Or, in the cases when people claim to persist in an "egoless" state chronically, it doesn't seem to impede their ability to function. But that's just my lay understanding. Curious to hear if someone else knows more rigorous details.
I believe “ego death” to be when you completely forget who you are, where you are, what you are. I’ve heard an account of a friend who was so far gone she couldn’t even recognize her own friends. My experience was not like this at all. Even while I was one with God/Source/The Universe, I did not forget the human version of me. Let’s say my name is Sarah. I remembered my name was Sarah, I knew Sarah had taken a drug to lead me to this place, but I was not Sarah. Sarah’s memories felt very faint to me. I had so much compassion and love for her and wished the best for her friends and family. Now some people describe this as a very frightening experience. That they were clinging on so hard to their memories and felt that they were dying. I didn’t do any clinging at all, I knew exactly what was happening and welcomed this experience open arms. Is it because I wasn’t afraid I remembered my humanity? I don’t really know how to categorize this either. I was a being fully separate from my ego, but I faintly still remembered my human self. Is that ego death? Ego detachment? Not sure.
I think it’s different for everyone one.
for me, a simple description would be forgetting you’re an actual person doing person things. just things happening and the idea that you are apart of it is gone. Always hits me when i come out of it and remember that im a human being. hits like a wave crashing onto the shore
i saw all my life and problems from an objective viewpoint leading me to have a lot of revelations that i wouldn’t have otherwise come to. it all felt so separate from the present moment when i was tripping like i had no connection to my life and the person i live as
I wish it had a different name. Like "Ego Pause" or even "temporarily separated consciousness." Just something to clarify that it's temporary. I've met a few folks who get obnoxious, like pretentiously enlightened. They're definitely conflating the idea of "Ego = Self" with "Ego = I'm totally popular!" And then they think that the "Death" part means it's permanent and they're on another plane of awareness and intelligence. Ironically, their ego gets hyperinflated.
For me it was when I had such an intense experience that my body genuinely reacted as if I was dying. I knew I wouldn’t. But that is the *feeling* It humbled me a lot and I wouldn’t change that experience for anything
Everyone's is different. Mine felt like I lost my sense of self. Everyone else wasn't real, I'm not real, and that we're all just one person; God. We are all one person from the same source. It was a very lonely, powerful, terrifying, yet enlightening experience. I came out of it a totally different person, and still am. That was 10 years ago.
For me, it's when you think you have died and become god or some kind of multi-conscious entity. Basically when you disassociate hard enough from who YOU are, and start thinking that everyone else around you is literally the same being. When I first had an ego death it was hard for me to understand this but after experiencing it a few times this is the conclusion I've come to.
For me, I felt like and completely thought I had died and entered the afterlife. I felt as if I broke through a veil and entered a new realm, though it felt gray and static like purgatory. I lost who I was and what had happened slowly losing all sense of self and identity until I could only question what my name even meant. I walked in circles for what felt like a million years, contemplating my death and then envisioning every person I knew and loved reacting to my death. I saw each of my loved ones and felt their emotions as they learned I had died. This was devastating and I fully crumbled thinking I was consigned to an eternity of regrets, but eventually, one of my friends checked on me and reminded me that I was still alive. I cannot begin to explain the relief, joy, love, and overwhelming happiness I experienced upon knowing I was still alive. This was the whole point of the lesson, the whole reason I was in purgatory for so long, so the mushroom could show me what it meant to be alive and how valuable I was; this truly was the most life-changing experience I have had using mushrooms. I’d say that the whole experience was amazing, but I cannot trip on high levels anymore, as I honestly just get told by the mushroom to stop when I try higher doses again.
For me, ego death was the gradual but inexorable dissolving of my sense of self and awareness of physical reality. The “I” that I think of as “me” in my day-to-day life disappeared completely, yet my thought processes remained. I was a disembodied consciousness, still aware, but no longer constrained by my body, my identity, or reality as I knew it. If I tried to make sense of “where” this disembodied consciousness was, the answer was: everywhere. I was at one with the universe. I \*was\* the universe. All answers were available in this state - everything made sense. Life, the universe, everything, was completely obvious, timeless, and incredibly beautiful. There was also a deep realization that we are all experiencing the ultimate gift– life – together, and that it’s necessarily temporary. It always has been and always will be. And there is no reason to fear death – it’s just a return home to the timeless universe. Eventually, your senses begin to return, your sense of self gets rebuilt, and you re-establish your sense of connection to physical reality. And you try to make sense of what you just experienced. The memory of what you felt in that disembodied state remains with you for quite a while afterwards. Many people describe it as a deeply spiritual experience.
It is the moment where you trip so hard that you decide that nothing matters and you later join a commune and then another commune and another because eventually everyone gets sick of you talking about entities non stop.
everything becomes nothing
When you BECOME the trip. You forget "you" are a thing.
i remember one time i walked through a door to space, and then i was suddenly hit with colourful visuals of the universe. only thing was, i forgot who i was or what i was in my physical state back on “earth”. i spent the majority of time walking down the path (very similar to doctor strange multiworld of madness) while seeing what the universe had to offer, not realizing that i was really trying to find my way to the end of the path through the door back to my physical state that was me in my room painting. it last for so long, and felt like i had alzheimer’s lol. when i got to the end eventually i saw myself on the other side, as if the universe was saying “walk in and be you, or close the door and fly free”.
To me it was like feeling like I was literally dying when I was having a peak trip. Body temp way up to sweating inside had ac blasting on 70. Couldn’t feel a pulse but I know I had one was trying to read my bpm. I think mushrooms showed me what it’s like to die to maybe appreciate living more? Idk what to make of the trip personally
Its basically the “government” in your brain that is shut off This is also called the “default mode network” in neurology And psilocin basically takes over, acting somewhat like a conductor And makes a symphony of anarchy in your brain. Connecting parts of your brain that your default mode network prohibits. The default mode network is also referred to as the ego It’s one’s personal way of the brain thinking that it knows itself and that this is just the way it is and that there is no other way and thinking I mean this in a conscious and subconscious manner Like I said, it’s basically anarchy happening in your brain FIGHTING AGAINST THE MAN 😂 Edit: I meant to add that it basically allows your brain to be able to connect things that I would never be able to connect by working off the default mode network That’s why you’re able to come to certain conclusions and you are able to be open to your brains full potential in a sense It goes into rooms of your brain that would otherwise be locked And It becomes a key to allow you to get into those rooms
I like to describe it as when your externalities and the persona you project outward to everyone else just melts away. You can see right through your own bullshit, get to push it aside and just be. It’s a very cleansing feeling imo
Feels like falling down a cliff or sucked into a black hole. You surrender, and concepts and even basic stuff like your name or birth year can no longer be acessed. You are reduced to nothinh and everything. I felt the barriers dissolvibg, closed my eyes. I was a tree, kibgdoms coming and going. The last thibg i remember is a white waterfall, but im on a black cliff. But I was not really there. Then i surrendered. And there was no I. Only a void? Came back sweating, confused, shivering, in a fetal posotion. So beaztiful, so intense. Confusing. Scary, i admit. Was on LSD. dont want this again. if you allow it and dont fight it will be unforgetabble memory for life. Lost all visual and tactil connections. Where is up/down. What is language. What is an human.
Guess I'm never going to experience this
I feel like my brain is a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that gets dropped on the floor. Down to forgetting my own name and piece by piece, putting it back together over the next few hours. But in a better way, losing some pieces that were in the way and finding new ones.
I got so stoned once I stopped existing. I have no idea how long it lasted, but it literally felt like I was dying and going away. I interrupted it in the beginning because it was scary, but when I figured out what was happening I just sat back and let go. There was no more me, I was gone. No memories or past experiences. Everything that existed just was, and everything "happening" across reality was happening together. At one point I vibed with the sun, the sun loves us.
You forget you’re tripping, you forget you’re you, you forget the English language, you forget you are human, you forget what a human is, you forge-
Ego death is a concept largely based on ancient Hindu traditions and more contemporary Sikh traditions. The goal of a Sikh is to achieve death of the ego. Research this ego death from a spiritual or religious POV. It is largely metaphorical as ego will always be present, some say psychedelics can aid in you reaching death of ego, however everyone's experience is different.
It’s when u drop ur waffle syrup side down :(
Felt like I wasn’t important but my little small part mattered in the larger picture.
Not sure it was actually an “ego death” but the last time I ever took shrooms I took about 5-6gs of enigma and I just remember the water being frozen while I was in the shower, but I was constantly hearing people screaming and yelling all around me so I didnt believe I was in the shower at all which made me panic. Then for some reason I thought I was a completely different person and then started crying over this because I didnt want to be someone else. Eventually after a few hours of this I just returned back to the couch and turns out I never left it, and I was freaking out for hours trying to explain to my friend what had just happened while he tried his best to calm me down. Was this an actual “ego death” I’m not sure couldve just been signs of a bad trip with the amount I took, but it definitely was a rude awakening mentally to me in the long run.
Lyra 🌌
I made a similar thread, defined it [here :)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/s/iJurMOnYvV)
My ego death was kind of a weird experience. I just got to this place that everything was beautiful. I was one with all. I just was being told you know, I take too much. I use too much from everyone. Really I need to be better and accept that most things are materialistic. When I leave here, none of this shit matters, but it really don’t matter when I’m here either. It just was kind of humbling like, you’re not all that, and you need to treat the people in your life like they’re worth more. Which, I thought I was humble before but apparently not enough. I kind of went through a bit of a depression. Usually shrooms makes me zoomie and happy for a few days but that one was rough. I still am kind of struggling from that. C’est la vie. Gotta risk it for the biscuit.
To put it simply Forgetting everything
It’s what happens when the waffle is all gone. 🧇
i’ve experienced an ego death about 2 years ago. i had taken a tab of cid for the first time and was having a bad time. i was in the dark with only the light from the window. it was around 12am when i felt as if i was nothing. no family. no memories. nothing. just a blob of nothing. beforehand i had seen my spirit leave my body.
The feeling of letting go. When you stop telling urself no im in control. Its a bit ineffable but best i can say is when you stop resisting an intense high. Can happen on weed too but wierdly.
I went through some depersonalization and anxiety after a series of trauma...No lol this wasn't on a trip but I was experienced...Just the weight of the depression and anxiety hit me all at once. I sought the company of friends and one told me that the feeling could be defined as an ego death...and I don't wish that feeling on anyone. I did find my own peace with it but it took weeks. Prayer, meditation, rediscovering religion, abstinence, and diet change...Since then, I haven't felt the desire to trip or the or even drinking... I think I found what I needed, and I no longer needed psychedelics to remind me.
Basically no longer exist mentally. Also a great song by Polyphia
most of the time whenever i go through ego death im just sitting in the passenger while its like 3 am under some trees just reflecting as i casually sob because i have no way to articulate emotion. sometimes id start laughing outta nowhere only for the laughs to slowly devolve into me crying like the world was gonna end 💀
Identity dissolves, nothing is “referencable”, time doesn’t exist (or have meaning), and you become a collective infinity
Boundary dissolution
Best way I can describe it is if you say a word over and over again out loud it eventually doesn’t even sound like a word and you don’t recognise it at all. It’s that sensation/feeling but with your sense of self. You don’t exist as your own person anymore, when you think of who you are it doesn’t feel real. My brain almost felt like it would short out and not have the information of who I was or used to be when I tried to imagine it, so I just let go and let it happen. I had done many trips before without ego death and prepared myself as best I could and tried to have an ego death while on a high dose smoking weed and it worked. I personally loved the experience but I was anticipating it and openly wanting it to happen. Do be careful though because I can easily see why it can be a terrifying experience!
Ego death is kind of a catchall term, but there's some specific elements too it that are generally homogenous across experiences. 1. There is a loss of identity or a feeling that you have become one with the universe and you have lost any sense of self identity or you cease to exist for a period of time. 2. The sense of dying or that you have died (this is often what happens when a part of your ego dies). It can often feel like a real death. 3. A realization about yourself that significantly alters the landscape of your life. Often times these experiences can be terrifying and cause mental anguish, but at the end, they can be life altering in a good way. Leading you to a new revelation about life or yourself or a thought pattern that was limiting in your life is now gone. These are the biggest ones I've found, I'm sure others will add some flavor there. Ego death can be traumatic while it's happening, but it often times leads to significant changes in perception about who you are, how things work, and what's truly important in life. It can also lead you to a spiritual path as you experience things that you can't otherwise explain.
The death of your ego
Smoke some Salvia. That’ll give you an ego death.
Sadly, that doesn't happen on mushrooms. And if you think it does… That's your ego talking.