A Neuroscience PhD Student Takes Psilocybin: What the Research Doesn't Prepare You For
I've read every paper. I could lecture on the neurochemistry. Nothing I knew prepared me for what actually happened.
I'm in the fifth year of a neuroscience PhD with a focus on serotonergic systems. I've read the Carhart-Harris papers, the Hopkins trials, the mechanistic literature on 5-HT2A agonism and default mode network suppression. I thought I understood what was going to happen.
I was completely unprepared.
The intellectual framework I had built did not give me access to the experience — it gave me a vocabulary for labeling it in retrospect. During the experience itself, no model was available or relevant. The concept of a default mode network did not help me when my sense of self was genuinely absent. The pharmacology did not give me an orientation to what I was experiencing.
What I understand now that I didn't understand before: the scientific description and the phenomenological description are not the same description. The experience of psilocybin is not explained by the neuroscience of psilocybin any more than the experience of love is explained by its neurobiology. Both explanations are true. They are not the same truth.
I am a better researcher for having had this experience. My questions are different now. More humble, I think. I'm less certain that what we're measuring captures what we're studying.
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