The mind creates many dreams on top of reality.

Psychedelics, strictly speaking, aren’t drugs. Most psychedelics (though not all) are physically safe in any reasonable amount(*), have no physical side effects and no potential for physical addiction whatsoever. Even the very slight potential for mental addiction can only be considered addiction in the same way that depression is an addiction to suffering. True, strictly speaking, but a gross misrepresentation of what it really is. Psychedelics are usually self-regulating.

They don’t and can’t show you anything that isn’t going on in your mind already. They don’t take you to “higher realms” or “other dimensions”. They basically take you through the contents of your existing dreaming to reality. Another way to say the same thing is that they take you to the realm of your unconscious. Hallucinations are just dreaming layered on top of reality, which is why they can distort your visual field with your eyes open. With your eyes closed your connection to reality becomes weaker, so the mind is freer to dream, you see more hallucinations and you can get lost in them in precisely the same manner you get lost in a night dream and temporarily believe this is your new reality.

The more the mind dreams, the sooner it settles down, because all dreams are not true and the mind gets tired of them. Seeing the contents of your subconscious dreaming consciously can have a side effect of relinquishing a small part of your dreaming in the integration stage via abandoning some of your subconscious irrational beliefs. That’s why people have a sense of increased simplicity of life, renewed vitality and various realizations, spiritual or personal, in the time following the use of psychedelics. That’s also why psychedelics are one of the most effective treatments for depression and PTSD known to date.

The most important thing is that all of it happens in the integration phase, not during the trip itself. The contents of the trip are absolutely irrelevant, in the most literal sense. The mistake most people make is clinging to whatever truth was “seen” during the trip itself and trying to make sense of it when they come off. To some extent this is unavoidable, because the mind will race to build an updated model of the world. But ultimately this has as much value as trying to interpret your night dreams, so at least don’t do it purposefully. It’s all just a dreaming mind, and the increased well-being after the use of psychedelics is coming strictly from a mind which is dreaming and confused slightly less than before, nothing else. Which is why it’s usually not productive to take very high doses or try to “figure something out” during the trip. But the fear, resistance, emotional release, and letting go into the psychedelic experience is good - this is all good practice.

So my recommendation to all psychedelic users is not to take crazy doses, focus on the emotional and sensual experience during the trip, not the contents of the thoughts that may come, give yourself time to integrate the experience, but don’t spend time trying to think about it or analyze it afterwards. In other words, don’t ask yourself “What did it all mean?”

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(*) Any substance turns to poison in large quantities. But “classic”, well-known psychedelics such as LSD or psilocybin have a very wide therapeutic index (the ratio between a lethal dose and an effective dose), which makes them extremely safe. For example, the therapeutic index of MDMA is estimated to be only around 15 [1]. In other words, take 15 times the standard dose of MDMA and with 50% chance you will die. For comparison, the therapeutic index of LSD approaches 1000 [2], and of psilocybin also. [3] But please don’t take massive, huge doses of either! It’s not needed. The point is to survive this process with your body unharmed, even though at certain times you will feel like “you are not the body”.

[1] MDMA - an overview [2] Lysergic Acid Diethylamide [3] Psilocybin therapy - Wikipedia