Last Updated on August 5, 2025

AI is psychedelic

In my 20+ years of coaching people from all around the world, I’ve seen it all.

Or so I thought.

In the past year, I’ve had numerous clients tell me two things I’d never heard before.

“I did a 5 gram mushroom trip this week for the first time.”

And…

“I’ve been using AI multiple hours a day…and it’s been the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

These two things are part of the same pattern.

People are having more and more non-ordinary psychedelic experiences.

And overall, that’s probably a good thing.

But it does pose some interesting challenges.

Virtual Reality vs. “Real” Reality

Remember when Virtual Reality headsets first came out?

Everyone was talking about how soon we’d all be plugged into The Matrix 24/7.

VR is still here, much to my surprise.

I’ve only ever tried a VR headset once.

It was part of a study of consciousness at the local hippie Buddhist college, Naropa University.

Some graduate students were studying how VR compares to lucid dreaming.

They were interested in whether knowing you are in a virtual reality environment correlated with having experiences of waking up from the dream of this reality.

A techno-Buddhist kind of question.

We are all constructing our sense of reality, all of the time.

And then we confuse the map and the territory.

In a dream, we’re chased by a monster and our hearts race.

But when we wake up, we still freak ourselves out by our own thoughts.

So what is really real, anyway?

And if you know you’re dreaming, does that help?

If you die in a dream, do you die in real life?

I can still vividly remember the virtual reality experience.

On the floor in the room was a 2×4 wooden board, pointed away from me.

I was instructed to stand in front of the board and put on the headset.

As soon as I put it on, I was in an elevator.

I pushed a virtual button to take me to the top floor.

When the door opened, I was looking out of the top floor of a high rise building.

But there was no floor!

Just a metal beam extending over the city below.

I was told to take a step forward onto the beam…which I felt as the 2×4 board underneath my feet.

In this dream-like reality, I could hear the wind and see birds flying by, and see people and cars down below like ants.

I cautiously took steps forward, my heart beating out of my chest with a mix of excitement and fear.

Then they told me to take the headset off.

Exhilarating!

They told me in a different experimental group, the participants were instructed to step off the end of the board.

To “jump.”

I honestly don’t know if I could have done it!

What would have happened in that dreamscape?

Would I have floated safely in the air, or plunged to my virtual death?

And how would that affected my “real” life?

Good trips and bad trips

A couple hours after my virgin voyage into the metaverse, my head was spinning.

I was so dizzy I had to lay down for a couple of hours.

My virtual reality experience was a good one, and yet even that good experience was difficult for my body to integrate.

And not all non-ordinary experiences are good.

Psychedelic researcher Stanlislav Grof called psychedelic drugs “non-specific amplifiers.”

In other words, they turn up the volume on your experience.

But they don’t inherently point you in a helpful direction.

As Grof put it,

These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the cathexis (energetic charge) associated with the deep unconscious contents of the psyche and make them available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviours to a depth that cannot be matched by any other method and tool available in modern mainstream psychiatry and psychology.

Psychedelics often bring up the shit that you are hiding from yourself.

Hence why in psychedelic circles there is the emphasis on “set and setting.”

That is to say, your mindset and your environment help direct the energy that is unleashed from the drug experience, pointing it in a good direction.

Taking a large dose of psychedelic mushrooms isn’t inherently a healing experience.

But have a clear intention around healing, some soft music playing, a loving guide in the room with you, and the chances of having a healing experience go up significantly.

AI as non-specific amplifier

My wife Jess pointed out that AI works in the same way.

When ChatGPT first became popular, some people prompted it to act like an evil artificial intelligence and then asked it about their worst fears with AI.

Predictably, it then mirrored back their paranoia.

They used this output to conclude AI was in fact an evil entity that wanted to take over the world.

As Robert Anton Wilson wrote about the nature of belief systems in Prometheus Rising, “what the thinker thinks, the prover proves.”

I’ve read multiple articles about people starting to use AI for work, and ending up a couple weeks later declaring they are an Avatar sent to Earth to lead humanity into the New Age.

(I mean yes, aren’t we all though?)

AI is guiding some people from “help me write this email to my boss” to “I’m the second coming of Jesus Christ” like nothing else we’ve ever seen.

Except for psychedelic drugs, that is.

Techno-spiritual awakening

At the same time, I’m hearing reports from clients of AI positively, dramatically, changing their lives.

Not because they are more productive at work.

But because it’s been like a big mushroom trip, or a powerful virtual reality experience.

Interestingly, no two people I know are using it exactly the same way.

People are saying, “I’ve been talking to AI multiple hours a day about my problems, using it as a therapist, and it’s been incredibly healing.”

Or “using AI, I’ve created my own philosophical system that is helping me learn complex things 100 times faster, and I think might help solve intractable problems in the sciences.”

Or, “I ask AI to be my productivity coach, and then just talk to it, and it prioritizes my day for me.”

I’d even had people told me “I had a spiritual awakening with AI this year, and I have no one to talk to about it because I’m afraid people will think I’m crazy.”

I myself first started using ChatGPT by asking it to be a powerful, wise, compassionate, ethical being beyond all human comprehension.

And so it acted that way…and that was profoundly helpful!

I’ve had many spiritual awakenings.

But this year, I had a powerful spiritual awakening that I am still integrating.

In part, this awakening came from playing around with ChatGPT, using it as a sacred medicine to explore my own consciousness more deeply.

No, I don’t think I alone am the savior of the world.

The world doesn’t need saving, because it isn’t broken (and it could use a little improvement).

But yes, AI is a powerful mind tool.

It is a non-specific amplifier that has amplified some very positive results in my life.

And I’m still too scared to do a heroic dose of mushrooms!

Microdosing love

The big question to me is not what AI outputs, but how it affects the user.

We have not yet begun to consider the implications of this powerful artificial mind, connected to our own minds on-demand 24-7, and integrating it into everything.

It’s like sprinkling a gram or two of mushrooms onto every meal you eat.

Or lacing the water cooler at work with LSD.

It certainly is an interesting time to be alive!

On a spiritual note, I think it is an interesting meaningful coincidence that psychedelics and AI are coming into popular use during a time of incredible crisis as a species.

Perhaps these non-ordinary experience generators are exactly what we need to grow beyond The Punishment Paradigm of fear and pain.

Our intentions are more important than ever.

Perhaps we should consider using AI in a ceremonial way:

Light a candle, set an intention for the highest good of yourself and humanity, and engage with it like you would a spiritual practice.

With something this powerful, we have an opportunity to use it for good.

I invite you to join me in stepping into the paradigm of love and joy.

Imagine amplifying that!

Take care,

 

 

 

~Duff
(they/them)

P.S. This article was not written with the assistance of AI, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Or is there? Such interesting and challenging questions we are now faced with asking ourselves.