Psychedelics and ego death
What does ego death and ego dissolution feel like during a psychedelic journey?
“I felt like I had melted into the floor; like I was a part of the floor and R. was gone. I didn’t know my name, or anything else about myself anymore. It was terrifying.” This was how my friend R. described what happened to her during an ayahuasca experience. Such experiences are referred to as ego death or ego dissolution. They may occur when one goes into a deep meditative state, during childbirth or a near-death experience, or during a psychedelic journey. Different people experience ego death differently and each person’s experience is unique. Some have described it as being absorbed or sucked into a bright white light, being a speck of dust in space, being burned away, or ripped apart by wild beasts.
Ego deaths can present themselves in a myriad of ways during a psychedelic experience, but they have one thing in common — they all involve a dramatic deconstruction or temporary destruction of personal identity.
The brain and ego death
Psychedelics like psilocybin or ayahuasca reduce the activity of the Default Mode Network (DMN) — an interconnected group of brain regions that psychiatrist Matthew Brown describes as the system that “reminds you that you are you.” The DMN is responsible for our “default mode” of perceiving…
