Sam Harris: Can Psychedelics Help You Expand Your Mind? | Big Think
Can Psychedelics Help You Expand Your Mind?
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Sam Harris discusses the virtues of psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA. While he does not condone the use of these drugs without caveat, he does acknowledge their profound consciousness-altering properties.
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SAM HARRIS:
Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.
Mr. Harris’ writing has been published in over ten languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, Scientific American, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.
Mr. Harris is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and holds a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, where he studied the neural basis of belief with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). He is also a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Sam Harris: Well many people ask me about the virtues of psychedelics because Iâve written about this on my blog and in my book Waking Up. And they were at a point early in my inquiry they were indispensable and this is an experience thatâs shared by many Westerners. Itâs hard to really recommend psychedelics without serious caveats because some of them I think are probably neurotoxic. Some are really well tolerated but still you can have very scary destabilizing experiences on them. So you just canât without a caveat recommend that people drop acid or take MDMA. So itâs â everything I say on the subject should be understood in that context. But for some people taking a drug is the only way theyâre going to notice that itâs possible to have a very different experience of the world. Theyâre sufficiently lumpen and uninquisitive about the nature of their own minds that if you tell them to meditate, if you teach them mindfulness, if you tell them how to follow their breath they will look inside for 30 seconds or 30 minutes and see nothing of interest and walk away feeling that thereâs no there there. Either it doesnât work for them or that everyone else must be just faking it or thereâs â it requires a certain talent and a certain degree of luck, therefore, to have enough concentration to connect with any âspiritual practiceâ the first time or even the tenth time or even after a year of attempting it because itâs just â these practices are difficult and the conditioning of our minds to just ceaselessly talk is deep.
So, as Terence McKenna once said, âPsychedelics are the only method that truly guarantee an effect.â And this effect can be, again, very painful. Youâre not necessarily going to have a good experience but thereâs no question that if someone gives you 100 micrograms of acid something is going to happen. Two hours later the significance of your existence will have just been borne down on you like an avalanche. And again this can be terrifying or it can be absolutely sublime depending on various causes and conditions. But the one thing it cannot be is boring. And that is you canât say that about yoga or meditation or just going into solitude or anything else that â any other, you know, non-pharmacological means of inquiry. So, where drugs have been indispensable for many people is in advertising the possibility of a change in consciousness. And so I donât think theyâre durable methods for people that â I donât think you need or should just keep taking drugs month after month, year after year, as a mode of spiritual inquiry. But thereâs certainly a period in many peopleâs lives at the beginning where you wouldnât even see a glimmer of reason to suspect that a radical change in the nature of your experience would be possible.
My first experience with psychedelics that was important, that actually shifted my view of human possibility was with MDMA which I took before it became a club drug. I think this was in 1987 I took it. And no one I knew, no one of my generation had taken it. And although the drug obviously goes back many decades before that. And it had not been adopted by popular culture as a party drug. So this was coming pretty much coming out of the therapeutic community. People were doing in a closeted way psychotherapy with it. And I took it as a means of discovering something about the nature of my mind. It was not…
Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/sam-harris-on-the-virtues-of-psychedelics-and-mdma
@bigthink
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
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@zipzapbim246
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
psychedelics and genocide
@JOELAFRICK
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
They haven't been used for tens of thousands of years in indigenous cultures for no reason… Time to Free The Fungi đ and let nature heal us.
@aarons2632
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
They gave MDMA the street name âecstacyâ for a fucking reason.
@aarons2632
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
In 87 it hadnât caught on in the mainstream U.S. but they were probably taking it in the house scene. They used to call them disco biscuits so they been around for a while. This guy probably was not into house music.
@cyberbules3085
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
Did he use the word "spirituality"?
I thought, he was over these metaphysic theories…
@2xebg
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
26yrs ago (in NZ) for $25 one could buy over the counter (r18) at most daries (24/7's) a granular drug called 'Mexican Tripping Weed' of various strengths (about 2 heaped teaspoons) one pinch of it in a cone would instantly take you to a scary life threatening place in your subconscious for abou 3 minutes, you'd then come to slowly & get normal vision back in pixelated form temporarily, not recommend for already disturbed people who may become violent, wkd experience, to be taken acationaly, now it's not around.
@lisaalexander1824
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
Pity religions were jealous and banned the Euphoric experience..imagine if we could have it every morning with coffee
@deanvinson4032
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
I will not listen to a damn thing this person has to say.
@Illumignosis
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
This question doesnât need answering anymore. The evidence is practically fossil record. The answer is unequivocally yes.
@mraei
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
50-80% of the people who benefit from psychedelics(under the right set and setting)
@El-Mazz
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
Without wanting to dispute what he says about psychedelics and the experience thereof <as I can attest to the same, out of my own experience> is it not understood and it will be hard to talk about it in an objective way đđź
I strongly believe that next to the POSITIVE physical experience, there is a âhidden billâ attached to it, namely the NEGATIVE attachment to spiritual entities which are receiving âlegal accessâ to someoneâs life. This goes beyond what many will be able to grasp or discuss, but I did my journey and itâs scary how short termed, positive effects can have their downside in long term demonic oppressions.
Some may dispute that this is simply a matter of perception and such entities arenât real. But this is exactly my point: many wonât believe or realize how real the spiritual realm is, in connection to such experiences.
@dernvader6876
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
You cannot have the same experience without the drugs at least initially, you can have a similar experience, but that will always be a natural experience, whereas the drug is an unnatural experience that you would never be able to have without the brain at least trying the drug once. I've been on acid / others in dreams, so clearly the brain can do it without the drugs, but you have to be shown the door, before you can walk through it by yourself… Without that initial connection, the brain doesn't know how to do it. So, in a sense you only really need to take each drug once, but that's for more enlightened people to do. I can't spontaneously decide to dream about being high, and it only happened a couple times in my life, we have a long way to go… but I think eventually we will be able to do it spontaneously without the drugs… that would be cool… They would have to make certain brain wave patterns illegal at that point… and don't think they wouldn't, because they need control…
@AndreHypnosis
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
Wow! Yes, I've experienced this "Christ Consciousness" but I have not tried MDMA before. I wonder if there is a safe microdose way for people to explore that.
@pawnipt
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
Would I want to expand my mind so that it can be narrowed once again by something else, because it will narrow again. The question is what will it narrow into?
@michellejaneould822
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
This is only for Brains No game Listen. OPEN MIND U NOT blind live ya like fear No invasion Mental Genius fone valerie
@fitveganathleteintegrateda1695
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
I was able to "get through" the looking glass, using meditation once. It was overwhelmingly difficult. I do also see how different parts of my brain sequence ideation differently than before. I don't think micro-dosing is therapeutically effective. Having those you trust with or without experience, on or off, can be very important for your first time.
@fitveganathleteintegrateda1695
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
Terrence McKenna was a ground breaking proponent of the spiritual and medicinal uses of various psychedelics, the potentially tens of thousands of years of use.
@jillspanulo2572
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
I had my most spiritual experience on MDMA (haven't tried a psychedelic yet) so after that, everytime I rolled, then when I did acid, always took time to get in the "spiritual" zone
@charlesvan13
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
He needs to take DMT so he can move past his Trump derangement.
You can just let it go, rather than being consumed with the fake news garbage that's destroying your soul.
@michaeloliver5896
December 20, 2025 at 5:13 pm
Tagshanno is the best dealer and she delivers directly to doorstep
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