"Others I know will literally lay on a couch for 10 hrs."
You can't tell how much the person is getting out of the experience just by looking at them. They could just lie on the couch for ten hours with their eyes closed and be having one of the most profound experiences of their life. In fact, someone who is using the drug for introspection is almost certainly getting more out of the experience than someone who is using the drug to explore the world. Most serious psychonauts recommend taking the drug laying down in the dark while blindfolded to get the most out of it.
I mean think about it, you're about to have one of the five most important experiences of your life, on par with death or the birth of a child.[1] Do you really want to have that experience while in a movie theater watching Harold & Kumar?
"Even at the 14-month
follow-up, 58% of 36 volunteers rated the experience on the psilocybin session as among the five most personally meaningful
experiences of their lives and 67% rated it among the five most
spiritually significant experiences of their lives, with 11% and
17%, respectively, indicating that it was the single most meaningful experience, and the single most spiritually significant experience. Furthermore, 64% of the 36 volunteers indicated that the
psilocybin session experience increased their sense of well-being
or life satisfaction either moderately or very much, and 61%
rated that the experience was associated with moderate to
extreme positive behaviour change."
I remember hearing a story, maybe from Ken Kesey, of someone who was given LSD during a medical trial and left with a pen and pad and told to write down how they felt about their mother. The researcher would be back later to get their notes and ask questions.
Research returns and is disappointed to find the pad empty and the subject unwilling to talk about his mother. The reason? He's just seen God and is busy drawing God on the wall.
So he utterly failed at his assigned task, but he had (arguably) achieved something far more important.
Absolutely this, from a personal experience. (Throwaway since a decent amount of people know who I am here.) I smoked a sizable amount (~4x my usual amount to get high) of marijuana one night with friends. They later reported me as simply staring into space, looking around, and saying random words from other languages. However, I was having one of the most incredibly profound, enlightened moments in my life, getting closer to understanding the basic questions behind life and what it is.
You can't tell how much the person is getting out of the experience just by looking at them. They could just lie on the couch for ten hours with their eyes closed and be having one of the most profound experiences of their life. In fact, someone who is using the drug for introspection is almost certainly getting more out of the experience than someone who is using the drug to explore the world. Most serious psychonauts recommend taking the drug laying down in the dark while blindfolded to get the most out of it.
I mean think about it, you're about to have one of the five most important experiences of your life, on par with death or the birth of a child.[1] Do you really want to have that experience while in a movie theater watching Harold & Kumar?
[1] source: http://csp.org/psilocybin/
"Even at the 14-month follow-up, 58% of 36 volunteers rated the experience on the psilocybin session as among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives and 67% rated it among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives, with 11% and 17%, respectively, indicating that it was the single most meaningful experience, and the single most spiritually significant experience. Furthermore, 64% of the 36 volunteers indicated that the psilocybin session experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction either moderately or very much, and 61% rated that the experience was associated with moderate to extreme positive behaviour change."