Turns out that in addition to being tremendously fun, acid and shrooms affect a part of the brain that's called the default mode network.
www.sciencedirect.com
One of the roles that it plays in our brains is that it sets patterns. Which is why things like addictions are hard to break. It also filters the world so that we're biased to view things in ways that reinforce our already held-opinions. Essentially, we literally create our own reality by creating and reinforcing our patterns.
Dissolving the dmn, aka ego death, is very similar by all descriptions to the Buddhist concept of enlightenment. When it dissolves, we feel "connected," "one with all things," "a tiny part of a huge amazing universe."
The concept of interconnectedness is antithetical to the concept of ego, so essentially a role of the dmn is to regulate how we view ourselves in relation to those around us. IE: Democrat/Republican, every other thing in the US that's somehow become polarized politically.
When we take actions that reinforce "our tribe" in opposition to "other tribes," we're programming our dmn to view members of that tribe as enemies, essentially drawing a "self" around our tribe and an "other" around the other. This is good in that it does things like getting people to attack and ostracize rapists and child molesters, for instance. This is harmful in that this same concept can be extrapolated to "other" things unhelpfully, like saying that all members of a race or religion or region or political leaning are bad.
The interconnectedness/ego, self/other, faith/doubt ratios of a person can essentially be tuned and balanced with psychedelics and meditation. I believe that depression is generally an affliction of people not feeling interconnected enough, and that narcissism is the product of people believing that they are overly important to the people around them. Both of these illnesses create their own patterns in the DMN, which lead to behaviors and thoughts that continue to perpetuate these patterns. If something were to exist like a trip sitter plus rehab, where people can have their desired patterns reinforced and their undesired ones (addiction) get a solid dmn wall built around the concept of doing whatever addictive substance again.
I don't claim to be an expert, or to know everything. All I can say for certain is that I reset my dmn last January and the symptoms of my personal PTSD and depression were reduced for months afterwards. Last fall I literally set a suicide date and now I'm alive and happy.
