Peter Attia· MD
but with MDMA you know my first experience on ecstasy I had this epiphany that this is what consciousness was like when it was no longer encumbered by myself concern by my egocentricity by my and because you were 18 I mean was it so much about like I'm trying to reflect on what it was like to be an 18 year old boy but I think if I recall you wrote about just sort of the empathy that you had for your friend because it was you and another friend right yeah and was that the part that was so stunning to you which was oh my god like spent the last 18 years sort of not thinking about it through somebody else's eyes or what was it that you experienced if you can recall that at least showed you and perhaps was the thin end of the wedge that said there is now an altered state of consciousness that could exist outside of this state that I'm in that might be desirable it was cognition that what was changing for me while I was coming on to the drug was that I was losing my concern about myself right so that is I'm talking to my best friend some of somebody who's who I already love and and I'm connected to and have you know positive feelings for but what was happening is that I started to punch through to this level of connection with him that I had never felt before despite the fact that we were great friends and it had a kind of structure to it or it was it was dissecting a structure within my mind that I had never had any cause to notice which was my default state was normally that you know if I'm talking to him some amount of my attention is bound up in a concern about what he thinks about me right so there you know if I see some change and expression on his face based on what I just said I'm reading into those changes some message about me some message about how I'm doing and there are many other features to this I mean there's also a sense of a kind of zero-sum aspect to my own stature in the world and my you know feeling of well-being in light of other people's success and and Happiness so and it's something you can discover in yourself imagine those times where you have a friend who has some you know massive success right you know you're struggling in your life to be as successful as you want to be if you're like most people you haven't arrived yet and then you have a friend you know who's winning some version of the