LSD simulation and "brain hacking"

I have never done hardcore illicit drugs.

I suppose that's just one more mark in the "boring" column for me in many people's eyes.  Oh well.
There is one substance, however, that piques my curiosity but never enough to get me to actually try it.  That is LSD.  The health threats combined with its illegal status were always enough to scare me off.  That and the fact that my imagination is so vivid and often dark that I'd probably wet myself and cower in a corner, thinking that bats and drakes were spewing out of light fixtures and my car was talking to me like Speed Buggy.  I mean, how humiliating to have somebody find me there rocking back and forth in a puddle of my own filth muttering, "I'm all alone in this world...I'm all alone in this world..."

And yet...

And yet...

I am left wondering if LSD truly can transport one to a higher state of consciousness?  As Terrence McKenna said:

"My notion of what the psychedelic experience is, for us, that we each must become like fishermen, and go out on to the dark ocean of mind, and let our nets down into that sea. And what you're after is not some behemoth, that will tear through your nets, follow them and drag you in your little boat, you know, into the abyss, nor are what we're looking for a bunch of sardines that can slip through your net and disappear. Ideas like, "Have you ever noticed that your little finger exactly fits your nostril?" and stuff like that."

Trippy.

Well if you've ever been curious about what an LSD hallucination is like but don't actually want to take the drug itself, it turns out there are brain hacks one can employ to simulate the experience.

In the 1930s, a researcher named Wolfgang Metzger found that sensory deprivation can lead to hallucination and it's something you can easily do from within your own home.  Using an MP3 player (I'm assuming Wolfgang used something else in the 1930s), headphones, a ping-pong ball, and a red light.

Geez, sounds like list of what MacGyver would use to build a nuclear reactor.  But I digress...

Download white noise onto the MP3 player and plug in. Turn the red light on. Cut the ping-pong ball in half and tape them to your eyelids, making sure that no light can get through the seal.  As the linked article claims, this should induce all manner of nifty hallucinations as images will supposedly just come to you.  If you decide to attempt this...and I am by no means encouraging you to or telling you that you should...please make sure to come back here to the comments section and let us know all about your experience.  Hey, at least it seems relatively benign to your health and it won't get you in trouble with the law.

There are also any number of YouTube videos that claim to simulate the experience of LSD.  Here's just one of them.   I can't vouch for how realistic the experience is for as I said, never touched the stuff.  The comments section offers varying opinions but that's typical.

YouTube comments are something like a Purgatory on earth.


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