# The Materialist Phenomenology of Psychedelics - [ ] 🚧 In Progress 🚧 Psychadelics are an incredibly materialist experience for how much so many people praise them for their spiritual powers. They prove without a shadow of a doubt how embodied our phenomenal experiences are. You take a medicine, an outside observer sees you in your body during the whole trip, yet phenominally you are having an experience caused by the molecule you have ingested. Mere chemistry affects your phenomenology so dramatically its considered mystical. This to me opens psychedelics up to a very atheist-materialist form of religious practice, even though it is so hyjacked by many varieties of mystics. One of the trickiest things I have had to deal with philosophically while taking [[psychedelic|psychedelics]] for depression and anxiety is the philosophy underpinning any experience had during the trip. One of my early thoughts was that psychedelics might be a way to face a [[fear of death]]. But surely psychedelics, while some may give you an experience you come to *believe* to be what death might be like, they do so *within your awareness*, which is therefore inherently unlike dying. Thus while they might give you insight into preparing for death through some comforting image, they can not actually give you insight into death itself, and any insight that seems to be gained in this direction must be subject to scrutiny. As Epicurus says: > _Death does not concern us_, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And once it does come, we no longer exist. This brings up the topic of false insight. There is an important dichotomy presented in psychedelic therapy: the fear of false insight as described above requires skepticism towards anything the mind might generate. Skepticism is highly necessary to the finding of sincere truths. However, tripping requires [[loss of control|surrender]] to the experience. Further, [[Phenomenology|Phenomenology]] would have us attempt to describe and catalogue our experiences for better understanding, but tripping requires the embrace of the [[ineffible|ineffible]]. One of my greatest insights from psychadelics so far has been a newfound skepticism towards the adequacy of language to describe all of reality, which is a topic I hope to explore while reading [[Philosophical Investigations]] by [[Wittgenstein|Wittgenstein]].