The experience of tripping on psilocybin mushrooms and the experience of rolling on MDMA are very different ones, not doubt. However, in both cases, one might feel an abundance of love – towards the self, towards people in the vicinity, towards inanimate objects. And yet, even though in both cases it’s definitely the overwhelming feeling of love, I felt like I experience two very different types of love under the influence of these 2 substances.

MDMA, Human love

I’ve chosen to begin with this one, since it’s easier to explain. On MDMA, it’s a if anything I look at, anything I touch, anything I feel, is just so very beautiful. Even difficult emotions and experiences can be seen as beautiful while rolling. This is why, I believe, MDMA is so effective in treating trauma – it allows you to really experience the feelings that have been buried for many years, without shutting them off or running from them, simply because you are so full of love that even those things seem beautiful in their own way.

I experience this love as very human. Off course, it’s far more overwhelming and all-encompassing that the everyday love we experience in our regular lives, but it’s still very human in a way that it stems from the ego. The experience of love on MDMA is all about ME loving other things – I love you, I love myself, I love this couch. This is not critical in any way, it is a simple observation – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Psilocybin, Universal love

On the other hand, love as I experienced on mushrooms is different – it does not stem from the ego. It does not require me, as an individual, to exist in order to experience it. If the experience on MDMA was “I love this”, the experience on psilocybin is simply an endless sea of love, and I’m drowning in it. The ego can dissolve and “I” can disappear, but the love will still be there. This love does not relate to any specific objects – it does not care what am I looking at, whether it’s myself, a different person or a piece of furniture. What ever appears, it’s already drowning in this sea of endless love.

It’s as if this love is there before any object catches its attention, before there is an “I”, before there are things that are not me. As if existence in itself is this sea of endless love and anything that exists simply appears within it. It does not require any individual in order to be, it is far beyond human.

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Neither of these types of loves is better or worse than the other, they are simply different. And if the purpose of this blog is to treat different psychedelics as different tools, characterizing these different types of love will help up understand the difference between those tools. So what are they good for?

In my experience, the personal love on MDMA is very therapeutic. It allowed me for the first time in my life to experience true love and acceptance towards myself as an individual and a human being. It allowed me to re-connect to myself after a long a difficult period where I felt detached. It also allowed me to connect to others on a deeper, more meaningful level, create a lasting and loving relationship with my friends that is far stronger than what it was before we rolled together. Also, as far as integration goes, it is much easier to integrate the things I’ve experienced through this human love in my day-to-day life, compared to the universal love I’ve experienced with psilocybin.

If we’ve established that Human love is very therapeutic, then I’d say that Universal love is very spiritual. The dissolution of ego into this sea of endless love allows us to connect to something that is far greater than ourselves, far greater than anything we’re used to relate to in our daily lives. Something so vast and all-encompassing that some would call it God. And here comes up the question of integration – how do you take something so profound and mystical, so far from our human lives, and integrate it in your regular daily life?

I don’t think there is any one answer to this question, but I can briefly share my own experience. While MDMA allowed me to connect to myself and others as individuals, psilocybin connected me to the whole experience of being. If everything exists within a sea of endless love, then everything has space. Everything is allowed to be. Every pain, every sadness, every fear – they all appear withing this sea of endless love, and thus they should be allowed to be, they should be experienced to their fullest, not shut out or supressed. Every feeling, every thought, every experience we have is allowed to be. Every moment appears in a sea of endless love that is existence.

What have your experience been with MDMA and psilocybin?

Have you experienced the same different types of love?

What do you feel is the way to integrate those experience for a lasting change in you daily life?

Please, feel free to share 🙂