For what it's worth, the chances that you will remain "you" for more than a short time are next to nil. You're different from your teenage self, who was different from your child self. Those people are dead, locked in the memories of a living person only slightly.
When you get old, there's a good chance brain disease will slowly erase your personality until nothing is left.
As you wander around the world, your blood pumps and exchanges ions, changing the physical substrate of your brain at every instant. Your sense of self is an illusion.
I think trying to hang onto who you are is like trying to hang onto a dream you're waking up from, but with the advantage that you can try to guide your future self into being a better person than you were.
I can clearly state that me 2015 is a distinctly different person than me mid-2013, some ways better some ways worse. My physical substrate has certainly changed. The fact that change is usually gradual and smooth hides the truth within a story we tell ourselves, mostly because our memories provide a sense of continuity.
That said, it's up to each person to weigh the risks of using a psychedelic drug. Would it help guide you into who you want to be in the future?
This is actually one of the insights that I think are pretty common with LSD. Your brain is made up of various subsystems (visual processing, time perception, language interpretation, language generation, motor control, etc.), but subjectively they all seem to be a singular "you" unit.
With LSD it's really demonstrated to you that the "you" part is in some ways separate from some of the other parts but in other ways not separate. It's a feeling and an experience that is very hard to describe to someone who hasn't also experienced it, although I have heard some people have a similar effect with really deep meditative states.
Either way, you're not likely to change into a completely different person after an acid trip. You just think about things a little differently is all, and even that wears off after a while.
> These chemicals will change your brain, and your brain is who you are.
I suspect that your brain is who you think you are because you've learned to associate the concept of self with your thought processes, but I ask you if you are indeed your thinking then how is it that you're able to observe your own thought ?
If you'll bear with me for a moment, doesn't it also make sense to think that you may be whatever is observing both thought and sensory phenomena ?
To run with that assumption for a moment.. if you are the observer rather than the thought, or body sensations under observation, then why assume that you're located in your brain ? After all aren't you equally observing the sensation of your little toe as you wiggle it ?
I suspect that man is so continually engaged with the process of thought-observation as his primary focus that he has developed a bais towards self-identification with that one area of the body in particular (the head) when logically speaking he has no reason to assume he's not equally located in his little toe.
Lets take this thought experiment one step further. If you can observe the body, as in the naturally arising sensory observation of bodily fabrications, and you can also observe thinking, then is it safe to assume that the observer is the same as that which is under observation ?
Or perhaps the observer is the process of observation itself rather than the observer or the observed (do you feel more like a verb or a noun lately) ?
or maybe it's both, or neither. Or could it be that it's neither nor one, nor the other, nor both, nor neither, as some buddhists have suggested ?
> It's not philosophical. It's physical.
If you come to suspect that you are either the observer, or the process of observing then how do you know for sure whether or not you are philosophical or physical in nature ? Or suppose you are both philosophical and physical in nature such as was reported to be the case with the fabled philosophers mercury of the hermetic alchemists ?
These are the kinds of questions that the process of self-reflection may stir up within the individual and for some people LSD can serve as a catalyst that prompts them to pause and reflect. I personally suggest that you can achieve the same thing with less risk to your person simply by pausing (becoming very still), and reflecting inwardly, but this doesn't come naturally, so it takes practice. I know from personal experience that the early teachings of the Buddha as preserved by the Theravada linage are almost entirely devoted to practical instruction on how to accomplish this very feat.
In closing I suppose if the article linked above is true, and ergot was a major component of the Western (greek) Mysteries then it occurs to me that perhaps it's this process of inward reflection, and it's fruits, which unite the ancient western with the ancient eastern mystical traditions.
A reading of the Gospel of Judas shows that hallucinogens, and the exploration of the metaphysical self, were key (forgotten/censored) parts of the Christian biblical experience as well.
