One of the most popular blog posts on my site is my essay on DMT jesters and tricksters (a modified version of it became one of the essays in my book, which includes a new section about my personal experiences). Several people commented on my blog post to say they have also encountered jester entities.…
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One of my favourite insights from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer relates to the human negativity bias, that is, our tendency to focus on what bothers us. As he writes: Just as a brook forms no eddy so long as it meets with no obstructions, so human nature, as well as animal, is such that…
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A ‘flow state’ is a state of deep focus and absorption when engaged in an activity, which involves a loss of self-consciousness and alterations to one’s sense of time. Flow states are common: they can occur when we are engaged in a variety of activities – from playing music to running – and in some…
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A common narrative in the psychedelic space is that having a psychedelic experience is like undergoing 10 years of therapy (or another number of years), condensed into just several hours. A headline for a 2023 piece in The i Paper reads ‘How a five-day, £4,000 psychedelic retreat saved me 10 years of intensive therapy’. Mark…
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Because of the influence of ‘set and setting’, not everyone’s psychedelic experience is the same. Various aspects of ‘set’ (e.g. beliefs, expectations, mood, personality, intention, level of restfulness) and ‘setting’ (e.g. culture, environment, music, people present) interact with the drug and the dose to produce a particular kind of experience. This includes the visual qualities…
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