It’s all in the brain, except for the dilation of the pupils that makes everything brighter on many hallucinogens.
LSD binds to serotonin receptors, in a way it causes neurons to misfire, leading to spurious signals.
Dissociatives, such as ketamine, instead diminish the signals coming to your brain. Your brain reacts by increasing gain, which makes more noise get through – similarly to what you get when you have a very quiet recording and you increase volume to very high levels.
It temporarily alters the sensory perception portions of your brain chemistry. You will hear some people refer to “hearing colors” or “seeing sounds”. While hyperbolic to an extent, from their perspective mid-trip, that is actually a concise, ELI5 explanation of what is happening to their brain.
There are a lot of factors that will determine if this temporary alteration is fun or scary (good trip v bad trip).
They boost serotonin and dopamine levels so you become much more aware of patterns within what ordinarily looks like chaos. That can change your attitude toward life. The whole universe life/death as swirling patterns of energy thing. Religion is shown to be a political joke.
Additionally, once you take them you find out how much of regular society has lied to you about how dangerous they are. That is going to change your values, too.
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