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The Altered States Archive

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Archiving accounts of
altered states of consciousness
across cultures and throughout history

Ayahuasca - Colombia

"I was 'seeing' with my brain, not with my eyes. Or more adequately: I was seeing with my mind."

Psilosybin - Goa, India

“We cried, we had moments alone, we had moments together. An entire lifetime happened in that wavey, orange room. Nothing and everything had the space to occur…The trip was on its way down but one overriding sense remained: beauty. The world was beautiful. The people, the sunset; everything.”

Tryptamine derivative  - Clinical Laboratroy Setting

“On the third or fourth minute after the injection vegetative symptoms appeared, such as tingling sensations, trembling, slight nausea, mydriasis, elevation of the blood pressure and increase of the pulse rate. At the same time eidetic phenomena, optical illusions, pseudo-hallucinations, and later real hallucinations appeared. The hallucinations consisted of moving, brilliantly colored oriental motifs, and later I saw wonderful scenes altering very rapidly.”

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Psilocybin - Germany

"I seemed to fully become the multidimensional patterns or to lose my usual identity within them... My awareness was flooded with love, beauty, and peace beyond anything I ever had known..."

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DMT - Switzerland

“I was in a garden, saw brilliant red, yellow, and green lights falling through a dark trelliswork, an indescribably joyous experience.”

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Ritual Psychoactive Hayes - Jamaica

“I noticed a tremendous expansion in the range of my audio sensitivity. I was hearing sounds from far away as well as the voices of people in rooms below me very clearly, almost as if they were in the same room with me.”

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Cannabis - Portugal

“I just feel my body melt… I hear the music inside my body, not just with my ears.”

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The Psychedelic Archive Project is a research initiative devoted to collecting and preserving written accounts of psychedelic and psychedelic-like experiences. Housed at Johns Hopkins University, the project aims to create a lasting, accessible record of how individuals describe these often fascinating altered states of consciousness across history and cultures. By gathering narratives from diverse voices and contexts, we seek to support scholarship, scientific research, and deepen public understanding.

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