Disregard Everything I say

DISCLAIMER: The only important source I am using here is my own experiences over countless trips and discussions with friends which may be completely different from your own experiences.
I’ve tried to keep this as accurate and well worded as I possibly can but most of these mental aspects are near impossible to explain in English and cannot be done justice with words, especially once we get past low and moderate dosages. However, I’ve done my best!
The level 1 - 5 system I’ve used here is described in detail here.

Enhancement of Mood: (1 - 5)

Most recreational drugs that are known for their euphoric properties are substances that chemically induce and force the human brain into feeling sensations of pleasure regardless of their current circumstances in life or mental instabilities.
This is the complete opposite of what psychedelics do to the mind as although a good trip can leave you feeling overwhelmed with the most intense and blissful happiness of your entire life the emotions are always grounded in reality. This is because the euphoria is not induced happiness but genuine happiness and the result of an enhancement of your current emotional state not something that is being chemically induced regardless of circumstance. It’s in this state that the mentally stable among us finally realize that all of this around us is cause for great celebration and start to become overwhelmed with euphoria and happiness.
But this is not is not what happens to everybody as all emotions including negative ones can be enhanced and magnified many times over and it’s this effect that plays a big role in causing a bad trips among the unprepared.
It’s this raw enhancement means that people with negative, irrational or unstable outlooks on life should tread very carefully when it comes to the psychedelic experience.

More Examples: Here

Removal of sensory filter:  (2 – 5)

The sensory filter is in my opinion the most important component of the psychedelic experience as it is the basis component that leads onto all other visual aspects.
I go into my speculation in much more detail into during the third and final section of this article but for now and put simply during normal waking consciousness your brain essentially filters out irrelevant sensory information and brain activity so that the conscious faculties are not completely overloaded with information. Its the removal of this sensory filter that leads to our conscious selves experiencing heightened sensory input and the very structure of the mind in an extremely profound way as closed eye visuals are the brain revealing itself to itself caused by the lowering of our sensory filter. 
The increased amount sensory input aspect is most commonly experienced in the form of increased music appreciation or looking at a tree and being able to completely comprehend and understand the position of every single branch across your field of vision all at once rather than simply the tiny area that remains in focus during sober living and is also where the visual effect of increased obviousness of existing textures stems from.
This sensory filter must have evolved as a mechanism to prevent sensory overload as a way of maintaining the ego as it seems that the harder a person is tripping the lower their short term memory is whilst in that state. This continues up until the point where a person is being exposed to so much of their brain that thier sense of self completely dissapears due to the sheer sensory overload.
Not only does this effect create for the visual effects of the psychedelic experience but can also give people complete and utter muscle control over every tiny part of their body. This feels like you have been put back in touch of the animal body and much can be learnt from this effect about what it feels like to be human and to have a physical body.

More Examples: here, here and here.

Time distortion: (2 – 5)

Time distortion is an effect that stems from sensory overload induced short term memory loss that can vary from anything between barely noticeable to completely overpowering but still generally making the passage of time difficult to keep track of and wildly distorted.
Time Distortion can be felt in three different forms. The first, which I have named Time compression is the experience of time speeding up and passing much quicker than it should and this is an effect that although not unusual is much less common than Time Expansion. Which is unsurprisingly the complete opposite in terms of effects as it is the feeling that time has completely slowed down. These feelings have a wide spectrum of intensities and can vary between the simple effect of much more time seeming to have passed than it actually has until somebody checks the time and snaps back into reality. Sometimes this can even be the complete slowing down of the passage of time, which is known as a moment of eternity.
Time loops and thought loops are the last sub-component of time distortion and stem from states of complete ego loss at extremely high levels of tripping. This happens when a person who is not used to the entailing loss of ego and finds themselves trapped in a loop of thoughts as they forget their original thoughts and slip into thought loops repeatedly over and over again due to the loss in short term memory; this feeling can be avoided by working your way up to the higher states so that you can become used to the profound intensity of the psychedelic experience and not be overwhelmed with confusion.  

Rapid fire thoughts: (2 – 5)

Rapid fire thoughts are an effect that I particularly enjoy while tripping. This is where your thought processes are sped up drastically and have a greatly increased sense of creativity and profoundness to them. When experiencing this effect it literally feels like one rapid thought after the other in incredibly quick succession and it’s this change in speed that results in massively increased creativity, problem solving abilities but also a mild sense of distractibility. One of the greatest features of this component is that it can partly stay many days or weeks after a good trip and can leave a person in a near permanent state of clear headedness if experienced regularly.  

“I flew through hyperspace this weekend, I’m sure I can handle this deadline at work today!”

Introspection: (2 - 5)

The introspectiveness of the psychedelic experience is probably its one of its most famous qualities and in my opinion the most obvious real world application to tripping balls.
The use of psychedelics as a tool for therapy, the rehabilitation of drug addicts and coming to terms with our inner demons and emotional baggage that we have all built up throughout our lives is something that it does better than anything else.
This is something that all of us need and it’s by far the ability to rationally think about and dissect my internal problems that has benefited me and all of the people around me more than any other aspect of the psychedelic experience. This also the single biggest contributor to a “bad trip” that many people people encounter during their trips as certain people suddenly comes to the overwhelming realization that they have a lot more personal problems to deal with than they originally thought. Whether or not a person is willing to overcome these struggles is the what determines whether people will react positively or negatively to psychedelic drugs.

More Examples: Here, Here, Here, Here and Here.

Removal of cultural filter: (3 - 5)

To me this is by far the most profound cognitive effect that the psychedelic experience has to offer as it is a permanent and life changing perception switch that occurs to any human mind after just a few good trips and is easily permanently grounded into a persons perception of the world. The cultural filter is an extreme bias that we look through in our everyday lives when evaluating the world around us and affects our ability to judge something for what it really is enormously. It’s this filter that forces us to look at our lives and reality not as a human being but as a false version of our true selves be it materialistic white middle class male with European Christian heritage, a Muslim housewife or an aboriginal tribesman in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. It’s said that we don’t look at things as they are but as we are and the reason this filter exists within us all is because we are determined, shaped and held back by the culture that raises us in greater ways than most people feel comfortable admitting. Especially those that pride themselves on their individuality and think that each brightly coloured streak of died hair on their head gives them an ever more unique and profound outlook on life.
As far as I can tell this cultural filter is instilled so deeply within our own psyches that we cannot possibly get rid of it by normal means such as simply analyzing our own thought processes and decisions but must resort to much more drastic measures such as an intense psychedelic chemical cleansing of the mind. It’s this effect of the psychedelic experience that can cause an unconscious selfish idiot to enter a trip and come out six hours later a halfway decent human being.

More Examples: here, here, here and here.

Increased Distractibility: (1 - 5)

As higher brain functions such as creativity and cognition are increased by any drug, neurological sacrifices have to be temporarily made for compensation. With psychedelics this comes not in the form of a comedown, hangover or profound stupidity but in the form of an increasingly large inability to comprehend anything outside of the present moment that grows proportionally with dosage.
This feeling is quite a familiar one to any Psychonaut as trying to maintain concentration during a trip can be incredibly difficult due to the sometimes overwhelming sensory input and complex visual effects that keep you permanently stuck in the present moment. At very high doses this increases up until the moment where it is impossible to comprehend anything that happened in the past or anything that might happen in the future as the present moment is so overwhelming these things seem distant, irrelevant and trivial. This increased distractibility at its logical limit becomes a crucial contributing factor to ego death as an overload of sensory input inevitably leads to complete detachment from not only anything but the present moment but from your knowledge, ideas, memories and your sense of self.  

Egodeath:  (5++++)

Ego death is one of the most intense experiences a human being can go through and is the highest level of psychedelic experience along side Hallucinations and Entity contact. It is more common than most people know and exists in very different forms even outside of psychedelics and can be reached through sensory deprivation tanks, meditation or simply being asleep / unconscious as any loss of self can technically be characterized as Ego death but here I am only going to talk about the state of Ego death that can be induced by psychedelics.
A state of psychedelic induced ego death is reached when a tripper has finally taken such a large dosage that their sensory filter is at 0% and is therefore allowing every single tiny bit of brain function and sensory input to reach the conscious faculties regardless of whether or not it is relevant in an extremely visual and felt form. This includes not just the sensation of being able to comprehend the input of every single nerve ending across your entire body all at once but also the sensation of experiencing all concepts, constructs and current activity stored within the brain in a single instant giving an extremely profound feeling that you are experiencing the entire universe all at once forcing you to feel completely one with all of existence and this is often interpreted as a perceived loss of boundaries between your body and the rest of the universe.
Egodeath is triggered by the experience of a concept and the completely all enveloping runaway thought processes that ensue because of them. For example if you were to hear somebody say the word “internet” a runaway thought process would immediately begin as you experience all concepts attached to your idea of “the internet” and all concepts attached to those. This spreads outwards infinitely and quickly encompasses everything in such a powerful and overwhelming way that you’re ego is immediately destroyed due to sensory overload reducing your short term memory to zero but keeping your long term memory intact. Once this is over in 3 – 4 seconds however your ego begins to quickly restack and reform itself as you are placed back into the room, This state of egodeath is constant if experienced in an environment that does not have changing external input such as a silent dark room but in places that are ever changing such as social situations the state only stays for very short but regularly repeated period of time as once a person is restacked another trigger is usually experienced instantaneously putting trippers into rapid fire bursts of not having any concept of the real world but completely at one with the universe.
The entire human mind typically looks and feels like an infinite sea of all enveloping fractals, concepts and non Euclidean geometry and considered to be so profound by anyone that experiences it in a positive setting reports that it feels as if their entire life has been building up to this moment and that they are finally “getting off the train”.

More Examples: here

The third and final section of my guide on the psychedelic experience can be found here:
>SPECULATION ON THE GENERATION OF VISUALS, DISTORTIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

This explains my theories on how psychedelic drugs work and how each type of visual component is generated. 

Also - There’s a guide for each class of hallucinogen not just psychedelics:

>THE VISUAL AND MENTAL COMPONENTS OF A DISSOCIATIVE TRIP

>THE VISUAL AND MENTAL COMPONENTS OF A DELIRIOUS TRIP

DISCLAIMER: The only important source I am using here is my own experiences over countless trips and discussions with friends which may be completely different from your own experiences.

I’ve tried to keep this as accurate and well worded as I possibly can but most of these visual aspects are near impossible to explain in English and cannot be done justice with words, especially once we get past low and moderate dosages so feel free to nitpick any tiny point that you disagree with by sending me a message. However, I’ve done my best and being able to put a name to a visual effect has really helped me understand and talk about my trips with others.

The level 1 - 5 system I’ve used here is described in detail here and never goes beyond 4 on this particular list because at level 5 the visual aspects are essentially impossible to describe. The leveling system I’ve used to describe Closed Eye Visuals is a different system entirely and can be found described in detail here. I am using the classic Serotonergic Psychedelic experience as my point of reference here but this guide still applies to the lesser known Phenethylamine family that are becoming increasingly prevalent. 

Most of the images are randomly found examples from across the internet but the main image for Tracers, Enhancement of Colours, Enhancement of Textures, Melting, Embedded Patterns and Scenery slicing were all made by my girlfriend whose tumblr is dedicated to the creation of such images and can be found here.

Tracers/ trails: (level 1 – 4)

Tracers are the simple experience of trails being left behind moving objects such as people walking, birds or cars. Trails are usually very obvious and are similar in appearance to the sort of trails left in long exposure shots. The trails can be either exactly the same colour as the moving object that is producing it or it can be a randomly selected colour of its own. These tracers float in the air for approximately 2 – 3 seconds.

The deepest or most extreme version of this visual effect happens when your entire visual field smudges into a tracer when you simply move your eyes rather than a single specific moving object, this makes it difficult to see unless you keep your eyes still.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to move your hand in front of your face or throw an object.

More Examples: Here and Here.

Enhancement of colours: (level 1 – 4)

Although this is one of the more basic visual effects, to be understood completely it needs to be experienced. During the onset of a trip almost all people notice that colours start to stand out and seem much more crisp than usual. Reds will seem “Redder”, Greens will seem “Greener” and everything will be much brighter and clearly defined in general.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to be outside in nature.

More Examples: Here.

Breathing:  (level 2 – 4)

Breathing is a very common place visual that can happen to any surface or object but is usually associated with the walls of a room. This effect makes walls appear to be steadily breathing in and out, expanding and contracting in the same way a persons chest does when they slowly inhale and exhale.

A fairly consistent way to reproduce this visual is to stare at a blank wall and lose focus.

More Examples: Here and Here.

Flowing Textures / Texture Distorions: (level 3 – 4)

Flowing, shifting, rippling or moving textures on surfaces are a strong visual effect that can happen to virtually anything in a number of different styles. A classic example of this however could be a wood grain pattern flowing like a river in a simple sort of looped animation. Pictures on a poster also commonly appear to be gently rippling and wobbling.

A consistent way to reproduce this visual is to stare at wood grain and lose focus.

Shifting Colours: (level 2 – 4)

Quite often the colours of various objects, particularly brightly  coloured out of place objects will become subject to an effect that shifts and changes the colours in a sort of strange fluid motion across the surface of the object. For example Moss on a rock could shift from green, to red, to blue and then back to green again in a very short space of time. This visual effect is not permanent and objects tend to immediately switch back to their original colour if you focus on something else for even a brief moment.

Enhancement of textures: (level 1 – 4)

This is an interesting visual effect as it does not really change the appearance of textures but rather a persons feeling towards them. During even a mild trip it is common for people to suddenly notice patterns and textures that they may have never previously appreciated or paid any attention to before. For example when looking at a carpet, a pavement or trees bark the complexity and beauty of the texture suddenly becomes obvious, this is because a persons sensory filter has been lowered dramatically giving them the ability to comprehend the entire texture at once, not just the small area that their eye is currently focused on which is the case during sober living. An interesting aspect to this visual is that it often partly stays with people after the trip giving them a new found appreciation for textures.

More examples: Here.

Melting: (level 3 – 4)

It is not unusual to see objects and sceneries to be completely or partially melting. This is a common visual and usually non permanent, meaning objects only appears to melt when a person is staring directly at them and immediately unmelt when the person’s eyes focus on something else even for a moment. It is also common for objects to appear to be melting before your eyes despite also never making any actual progress at the same time. This part of the effect needs to be experienced to be understood.

Transformations and distortions: (level 3 – 4)

This visual effect can vary widely in its intensity and distinctiveness depending on the setting and the dosage. There are an infinite number of ways this visual can manifest itself and can be anything from people turning into reptilians before your very eyes to pet dogs appearing to be much longer than usual. A mild or low level example of this could be a person’s face stretching and distorting into a caricature of themselves and a highly intense example could be the complete transformation of the external world into an incomprehensible anything. This visual is non permanent and is never realistic enough to convince a person that it is actually happening.

More Examples: Here and Here.

Embedded patterns: (level 2 – 4)

This is yet another visual effect that applies to textures. This visual effect, instead of simply distorting textures or making them more interesting completely replaces them with often fantastical versions of themselves. Quite often the textures on a person’s surroundings suddenly follow a patterned theme such as Aztec fractals that become embedded on anything and everything from the pavement, to the grass and the walls. This effect needs to be experienced to be fully understood.

A consistent way to produce this visual is to stare at a towel or rough surfaces such as tarmac and gravel.

Synaesthesia: (level 3 – 4)

Synaesthesia is a very interesting aspect of tripping and can be experienced via means other than psychedelics as it is a genuine condition experienced mildly by 1 in 23 people, simply put this phenomena is the mixing and blending of senses. The most common version of this is usually seeing sound and music in a visual form but is not limited to this. People can taste colours, hear smells or any other combination of senses that you could think of.

This visual is hard to consistently produce but listening to music through a set of headphones in darkness or with closed eyes or eating food with closed eyes can occasionally do it.

Scenery Slicing: (level 3 – 4)

Scenery slicing is a fairly uncommon visual but appears regularly enough and across multiple people to make it worth mentioning. This effect usually happens suddenly and makes the scenery appear as if it has been cut remarkably cleanly into separate slices with a razorblade. These separate slices can be as simple as 3 separate sections or as complex as multiple slices of a moving interlocking spiral that’s been cut into your field of vision.

Extreme Pareidolia: (level 2 – 4)

Pareidolia is the name for people’s natural ability to recognize faces and significant images in almost any vague or random stimuli. Examples of this include spotting Jesus on a piece of toast or spotting a face in the bark of a tree. During a trip a person’s sense of Pareidolia is increased many times over causing faces and images to be recognizable in almost anything to the point of ridiculousness. For example every single leaf on a tree might suddenly look like a little green face or clouds might appear to be easily recognizable as fantastical objects without any distortions or transformations taking place. Another aspect of this visual often experienced in busy public places is mistaking every other person for somebody you recognize.

More Examples: here

Depth Perception Distortion: (level 3 - 4)

It is very common to experience both extreme and subtle perspective distortions during a psychedelic experience. This is where the depths and layers of the scenery in front of you can become exaggerated, skewed and completely mixed up. A classic example of this that I often experience is the swapping of layers in a scenery. This is where objects in the background come into the foreground and objects in the foreground get pushed into the background. Another example of skewed depth perception is a complete loss of it, when the different sections of a scenery both close up and far away will unify into one flat pattern momentarily.

An almost consistent way to reproduce this visual is by laying down under a tree and looking through the branches at the sky causing the sections of sky in-between the branches to come into the foreground whilst the branches get pushed into the background.

Closed Eye Visuals: (level 3 – 5)

Closed eye visuals or CEV’s are the most exciting and profound element of a typical moderate dose psychedelic experience as well as one of the most impossible to describe or show to people in any meaningful level of detail that can be understood without having a firsthand experience with them. There are 5 different levels of CEV’s each one increasingly dramatic and incomprehensible.

1. Visual Noise – This is the most basic level of CEV’s and can be experienced in a completely sober state. It can be described as the random light and dark red regions that can be seen under the eye lids.
2. Light / Dark Flashes – This level is also easily obtainable without psychedelics and usually appears as regions of fleeting dark / light flashes of colour.
3. Patterns, Motion and Colour – This is the level where things start to get distinctively psychedelic and complex indescribable shapes and patterns begin to show themselves. These patterns are usually brightly coloured and very fractal like. 
   These closed eye visuals generally only manifest themselves when a person is closing their eyes at first but eventually become laid across your field of vision as a flat translucent veil in front of your eyes.  
4. Objects and Things – This is a fairly deep state where a persons CEV’s become increasingly complex and begin to manifest themselves not just as shapes but as imagery within the visuals. This imagery is limitless but commonly follows themes of fantastical people, objects and places that appear within the even more complex geometry.
   At this level the closed eye visuals are fully three dimensional and will be sprawled out across the surfaces, walls, objects and furniture of your environment instead of displaying itself as a simple flat veil.
5. Overriding Physical Perception – This is the point at which CEV’s have become so intense, vivid and bright that they have blocked out and replaced the external world giving the sensation that you are blind from being able to see so much. This is commonly known as “breaking through” because of the feeling of having entered into an entirely different dimension, to anybody else however the tripper just appears to be unconscious or at least highly incapacitated. 
   The visuals themselves eventually become complex enough to follow completely impossible plots, storylines and hallucinations that are so incredibly well defined that they seem realer than anything that could possibly be experienced sober.
   I can usually tell when I’m starting to break through when the visuals are no longer overlaid across objects or across flat surfaces but when the environment I’m in starts to break apart to become the patterns itself. You can see reality flaking away, layer by layer into an infinite sea of closed eye visuals as soon as you begin to focus on any point. This is almost as if everything is becoming everything else.

More Examples: Here, and Here. 

Hallucinations: (level 5+)

At higher levels of psychedelic experience amidst the chaos of intense closed eye visuals the imagery begins to become so elaborately complex and realistic that they start to form into full on vivid hallucinations that are limitless in their potential, generally logic defying, unlike any thing previously experienced and sometimes completely untranslatable into English. 

Hallucinations only happen at level 5 psychedelic experiences and are commonly described as feelings of being thrust into an expansive void-like alternate dimension consisting of bright, colourful, fast-moving kaleidoscopic environments, dynamic pulsating coloured beams, as well as complex three-dimensional geometric, mathematical and linguistic patterns made of light.

Contact with autonomous entities are very common, these entities generally appear to be the inhabitants of a perceived independent reality who are expectant of and clearly excited about the trippers sudden appearance into their dimension and enjoy interacting with them in various ways. 

The behaviour of a typical entity is one of a loving kind intelligence that simply wants to show you as much of their hyper dimensional space and bestow specific pieces of knowledge upon you as quickly as possible before you begin to come down or slip into another hallucination. This is often done by directly manipulating what you can see and view; intentionally propelling trippers in different directions at disorienting speeds, forcing them to view or pass directly through macro and microscopic scale settings, including: planetary systems, galaxies, quasars, natural environments, space habitats, technological utopias, neurons, DNA, mitochondria, trilobites, cephalopods, bryozoa, and artificial self-replicating machines. Once the comedown inevitably begins to happen they are genuinely saddened by your disappearance, often wave goodbye and encourage you to visit more often.

Entities can literally take any form but common subconscious archetypes are definitely present and contact with bodiless super intelligent Humanoids, Aliens, Elves, Giant Spheres, Insectoids, Beings of Light, Plants and Robotic Machines are common.

These creatures and entities are comprised of a non physical closed eye visual based material and communicate with trippers via a combination of telepathy, visual linguistics, mathematics and morphing coloured structures of different textures. This complex visual language is capable of expressing pure meaning in a way that our current system of small mouth noises will never be able to become close to matching.

Lower levels of simple entity contact can be described as a sensed presence of “The Other” that is clearly there but unable to fully manifest itself and communicate with you due to too low of a dosage.

More Examples: Here and Here

Miscellaneous, Unique and Rare visual effects: (4 - 5)

Although there are many universally experienced visual components of a psychedelic experience you should not allow this guide to give you preconceived notions for two separate reasons. The first reason is that although I’ve done my best with these descriptions and images they will never come close to the real experience, the real thing is incomprehensible, logic defying and impossible to translate into two dimensional images and words. The unenglishable factor is one of the few things that all psychonauts can universally agree on so keep it in mind.

The second reason is that the psychedelic experience is still a subjective experience and not by any means confined and limited to these visual components as occasionally, just occasionally rare and one time only visual effects seep their way into the trips, these effects can be anything and usually occur at higher doses. Unique visual effects are completely personal to you and something that nobody else on the planet has ever seen before or will ever likely get to experience again, the human mind has not even come remotely close to being fully explored making experiencing the unimaginable much easier than most people think. So remember, do not limit your perception to the components described above, because there is more to the psychedelic experience than words can ever say.

>PART 2 - THE MENTAL COMPONENTS OF A PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE

The next part to my guide although with less interesting pictures is just as important as the first half.

Useful Links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_experience
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant