Why is the Message Not to Take Life So Seriously Common on Psychedelics

In my early 20s, I had a mushroom trip that dramatically changed my relationship with the universe. After consuming nearly 4 dried grams of liberty caps, I found myself sitting in my garden pondering the nature of reality, where I began to feel stuck on a point. If we exist in a universe which is theoretically infinite but also expanding, then what is it expanding into? It was like the mushrooms responded to me that the universe is everything, and so thinking about it in terms of what it’s expanding into would be an irrelevant thought process. I struggled to accept this and felt philosophically stuck, almost in a thought loop, unable to wrap my head around the idea that the universe is everything and not expanding into anything. 

This became slightly worrying, where I felt like I was possibly losing touch with reality and genuinely stuck in this trip that was creating some negative feelings…it was a realisation of how little we understand and how little we’re actually able to understand as humans. There was a sense of hopelessness, almost as if I wouldn’t ever be able to get my head around this – and then for some reason, my friend appeared to me in my minds eye as a water vole sitting on a riverbank, who told me not to worry because I’d never be able to get my head around this concept of an infinite universe being everywhere and everything.

The sight of my friend as this animal shifted my energy from feeling stuck and confused to rolling around in my garden in a fit of laughter. I went from feeling frustrated at not understanding to feeling complete joy in the fact that the universe is so much more than my tiny brain could possibly comprehend, and in this moment, I saw a vision of the universe sticking its tongue out at me.

In this moment, I couldn’t even believe I was so stuck, as the funny side to not being able to comprehend the infinite nature of the universe also made things so glaringly obvious. Why did I think I needed to figure it out when I could just revel in the joy of existing within something which is far too grand and complex for me to understand? In this moment of intense laughter, I was able to appreciate the beauty of the forever unfolding of a universe that I could never understand, where there would forever be questions to explore. 

This moment also reminded me of a scene from the cartoon Futurama where the character Professor Farnsworth comes to a point of understanding everything, and then, in a state of despair, says:

I devoted every waking minute to answering the fundamental questions of science. I never married. Rarely went outside! And, now that I've found all the answers, I realise that what I was living for were the questions!

Laughter can certainly play a powerful role in psychedelic experiences, where it can facilitate new perspectives and potentially complement the neuroplasticity that might occur under the influence of psychedelics such as magic mushrooms or LSD. When we’re with friends who share a similar sense of humour, laughter can serve a beneficial social function, helping us bond with others and share moments of communal joy. 

I have often spoken about LSD as being “joke fuel”, where it allows the mind to read between the lines and find the funny, where others might not be able to. I’ve been in situations on low doses of LSD around others who haven’t taken any, and more often than not, I’m the person who’s cracking jokes and making others laugh. I think there needs to be a certain pre-requisite for humour, though, and I’m generally the person in my social groups who is often looking for moments to make a joke.

It’s not that I don’t take life seriously in the moments that require it, but more so that my experiences with psychedelics have allowed me to exist in a way where I don’t take life too seriously. There’s an ability and freedom to play with reality and see where there might be a continuous thread of something of a cosmic joke, where we’re aware of the illusion of the self, which then allows us not to take life too seriously.

If “I” or the ego doesn’t actually exist, we feel liberated in finding it funny to think how much we’ve been trapped in the story of the self, especially when our psychedelic experiences can so profoundly show us a more unitive version of reality. Often, psychedelics are spoken about in serious terms within a psychotherapeutic context, but perhaps we might find a lot of insights through consistent engagement with the idea of not taking life too seriously. Could the experiences where we encounter humour provide some kind of access to truth or a liberation from certain thought patterns? 

While it could be seen that laughter might act in a dismissive way, especially when people are going through intense experiences, we can look towards certain mystical traditions that incorporate humour. In the context of destabilising a sense of false certainty, we can be opened up to a multitude of new possibilities.

Taking life too seriously could be seen as a way for the ego to exert itself, especially in situations where we might feel threatened or be motivated to impress. I’m sure all of us have gone through this, but there could be the danger of becoming stuck in this seriousness, where the ego is too focused on the maintenance of the identity. People who take life too seriously are probably thought of as being quite controlling and not wanting to lose that control. 

So we might be off to a bad start in trying to figure out if psychedelics can facilitate us to not take life so seriously, because perhaps the people who take life too seriously have the feeling that they would, in fact, lose control under the influence of psychedelics and just be totally put off by them. Perhaps those who feel too strongly towards a coherent narrative don’t want to run the risk of destabilising it, but there might also be those who have an inkling about the limits of how much they’re actually able to control things in the first place.

We can turn this idea of ‘losing control’ on its head, where, rather than the perception of it meaning that you might go crazy, it’s more so that we’re able to relinquish some of the rigidity which might prevent us from experiencing something totally new and profound. Rather than this sense of losing total control, it could be thought of more as losing the attachment to certain roles, meaning, or moral certainty. The neurophysiological modulation that seems to occur in our brains under the influence of psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms shows how certain substances can impact our Default Mode Network to loosen the tight grip of our ego. 

The subjective experiences we might encounter could lead us to perceiving certain aspects of the world in an absurd way, where, through this comedic interpretation, we might potentially free ourselves from the trappings of an ego-based society. My foray into the world of psychedelics and humour has been primarily through the work of the late American stand-up comedian Bill Hicks, who was particularly fond of certain substances, including LSD, cannabis, cocaine, and ecstasy. But more importantly, his experiences with magic mushrooms provided a means for him to explore different avenues of thought within a wider context, where he came to the conclusion that everything in reality is somehow interconnected. For Hicks, such experiences peeled back the false materialistic veneer which has been placed on reality in order to distract the masses. He regularly spoke about mushrooms in his act, saying:

I'm glad they're against the law, 'cause you know what happened when I took 'em? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours, going "My God, I love everything." The heavens parted, God looked down and rained gifts of forgiveness onto my being, healing me on every level, psychically, physically, emotionally. And I realized our true nature is spirit, not body, that we are eternal beings, and God's love is unconditional 'n' there's nothing we can ever do to change that. It is only our illusion that we are separate from God, or that we are alone. In fact the reality is we are one with God and He loves us. Now, if that isn't a hazard to this country... Do you see my point? How are we gonna keep building nuclear weapons, you know what I mean? What's gonna happen to the arms industry when we realize we're all one. Ha ha ha ha ha! It's gonna fuck up the economy! The economy that's fake anyway! Ha ha ha! Which would be a real bummer. You know. You can see why the government's cracking down on the idea of feeling unconditional love.

In this moment, Hicks is dealing with something very serious (the military industrial complex) while also transmuting this into a comedic bit, where potentially we can free our minds from the gravity of the realisation that we’ll most probably be forever stuck in a state of perpetual war. Through the humour, we can recognise the absurdity of a situation by making fun of governments that want to keep making money from war, so they won’t ever let us get to a point where we can truly find unity with each other. The ability of Hicks to reveal the absurdity might place him more within the realms of a modern-day mystic, rather than simply a stand-up comedian who was able to find humour in almost every situation. When speaking about cannabis, Hicks said:

Not only do I think pot should be legalised, I think it should be mandatory. Think about it, you get in traffic behind somebody, [imitates truck horn honking] "Shut up and smoke that. It's the law." [puff puff] "Oh, sorry, I was taking life seriously. [giggles] Oh man, who's hungry?"

In these moments of not taking life too seriously, we’re able to step outside of the normal confines of ourselves, where the result manifests as something of a mystical experience.

It often feels like there needs to be some justification for the exploration into psychedelics and humour, in a way that positions it against the serious nature of utilising psychedelics within a psychotherapeutic context. But this idea of psychedelic-inspired cheerfulness isn’t an escape from dealing with our trauma or detaching from the responsibility to engage with the more challenging aspects of our lives, despite how it might potentially come across. 

It could potentially be an opportunity to take suffering, care, and meaning seriously without necessarily getting bogged down in attachment to identity or control. Perhaps we find this difficult within the context of psychedelics, because there’s reason to believe that the more hedonistic attitudes of the 60s and 70s didn’t take life seriously enough. Perhaps there’s a good argument to be had for the countercultural movement derailing, or at least significantly delaying, the positive impacts of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which had been emerging since the 1950s. It might even be that this countercultural movement was itself intentionally derailed to control the impact of psychedelics on wider society, leading to a current situation today where access around the world still has many restrictions, despite a fair amount of progress since the enactment of laws passed by the UN from the 1960s onwards. 

These restrictions have bottlenecked the discussion and exploration largely within a psychotherapeutic context, but we can look to not taking life too seriously in terms of being psychologically flexible and a positive marker of well-being. This psychological flexibility can help within the context of psychedelics, where our experiences have the potential to break us out of loops that we ascribe so much meaning to, such as depression spirals or anxious thinking. The power of psychedelics to inspire creative thinking and allow for humour to flow in can provide us with insights to discover new pathways out of certain thought patterns, ultimately allowing us to have a persistent undercurrent of not taking life too seriously. 

One of the most impactful psychedelics for creativity is LSD, with a strong ability to increase novel thinking and ascribe symbolic meaning to things or situations. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about tripping with others while under the influence of LSD is the joy of engaging in fun conversations, and often creating comedic bits in an improvised way, where you’re constructing a whole universe of novel silliness. There’s almost something intrinsic about LSD which makes me want to be silly and play with the constructs of reality, where there almost seems to be unlimited potential to explore. 

One big proponent of LSD, Timothy Leary, was often considered as something of a ‘trickster’ who was allowed to say certain things because they were expressed in a funny way. Similar to stand-up comedians like Bill Hicks, Leary questioned perceived norms and certain ways of thinking, where he inspired others to let go of rigidity and essentially catalysing people to not take life too seriously. Often describing himself as a ‘trickster guru’, Leary provided a crossover between spiritual inquiry and humour. 

One historical figure from Muslim folklore who might provide some of this insight is Mullah Nasruddin. He was often described as being a ‘holy fool’, with many stories about him often relating to a humorous situation where he would be the butt of the joke, but in a way which would always reveal something or turn a situation on its head. My favourite story is one where a neighbour observes Nasruddin throwing sesame seeds onto the ground. There were sesame seeds everywhere! “What on earth are you doing?” the neighbour asked. “I’m scattering sesame seeds,” Nasruddin replied calmly. “I can see that!” said his neighbour. “But I don’t understand why you’re scattering sesame seeds.” “To keep the tigers away,” said Nasruddin. “I highly recommend you give it a try too!” “I still don’t understand,” his neighbour replied. “There aren’t any tigers anywhere near here.” “I know!” Nasruddin exclaimed. “Isn’t it wonderful? The sesame seeds are working just as expected!”

This moment provides some wisdom about logic, perspective, and the questioning of assumptions, which seems to arrive unexpectedly through humour in something of a sideways fashion. We might also see this break from social seriousness when we look at the concept of the Heyoka among the Lakota and Dakota peoples of the Sioux culture of the Great Plains of North America. The Heyoka can be seen as a sacred clown, jester, and contrarian who speaks in opposition to social conventions – this might be riding a horse backwards, wearing clothes upside down, or splashing around in a puddle and claiming to be drowning. 

Another example of enlightenment, which might look a bit different or perhaps inappropriate, is that of Crazy Wisdom, coined by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was one of the major figures to bring Buddhism to the West. Trungpa described this wisdom as the point we get to where we have done so much discovery, that ultimately we realise there is no differentiation between self and other, and our minds can then be truly free without being constricted by preconceived notions of enlightenment. 

Psychedelics can facilitate the internalisation of these functions, where we’re able to engage with joyful experiences infused with humour that allow us moments of freedom and release.

It seems obvious to say that trauma is serious, but it’s important to reiterate that not taking life too seriously doesn’t mean we ignore the moments where we need to be serious. It’s more about transmuting the seriousness so it doesn’t dominate our entire being, and utilising the laughter during our psychedelic experiences can melt the rigidity, which might keep us in a state of taking life too seriously.

Laughter within psychedelic states can facilitate emotional integration, as well as provide relief and liberation without the need to overanalyse the situation. Psychedelics remind us that laughter is always available and can allow us to work through our trauma with more ease and flexibility. We’re not erasing the pain, and we can’t change the past, but we can make an effort to transmute what we’ve been through in positive ways that create more joy in our lives. 

Perhaps the resistance and pain become too great when we seek to control, essentially believing that we always need to take life seriously in order to see where the insights lie. But what if seriousness is just the default mode of our ego, and psychedelics are here to disrupt it? 

What lingers after our experiences might be more lightness, reduced existential panic, and an increase in our positive creative engagement with our world. 

Oli is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at [email protected]