Question for those who discovered psychedelics later in life.
Did you notice the years/seasons go by at a slower pace after psychedelics?
I think this is the case for me (started psychedelics after 40). Subjectively, curiosity and appreciation for life increased. The added contemplation/memories/thoughts make the weeks/months seem to go by slower. However, alcohol abuse effectively stopped after psychedelics which may be a confounding factor.
The research below suggests that loss of Neural network efficiency can make time feel as if it is going by faster as our brains age:
https://www.sciencedaily...2019/03/190320120547.htmSince psychedelics are know to have
neuroplasitc effects, maybe one positive effect could be the sense that the years go by at a slower rate compared to before psychedelics came into one's life.
Anyone else have this feeling?
Per the research, eye movement (more frequent in children with fresh minds) can be a quantifiable metric for this. It may be interesting to get this data for non-psychedelic and psychedelic adults.
Adrian Benjan wrote:Bejan attributes this phenomenon to physical changes in the aging human body. As tangled webs of nerves and neurons mature, they grow in size and complexity, leading to longer paths for signals to traverse. As those paths then begin to age, they also degrade, giving more resistance to the flow of electrical signals.
These phenomena cause the rate at which new mental images are acquired and processed to decrease with age. This is evidenced by how often the eyes of infants move compared to adults, noted Bejan -- because infants process images faster than adults, their eyes move more often, acquiring and integrating more information.
The end result is that, because older people are viewing fewer new images in the same amount of actual time, it seems to them as though time is passing more quickly.
Journal Reference: Adrian Bejan. Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older. European Review, 2019; 1 DOI: 10.1017/S1062798718000741