Comment by LoganDark

> None of that new information you provided is something that can be corroborated against the historical record.

> The claim is that LSD gave you access to long-locked up memories that happened to corroborate with what you are going through now.

I think it's more like it gave us different perspectives on the same memories. We've had those memories but we couldn't see them that way before.

Also, uncovering this stuff randomly is what starts these paths of discovery for us. It's not that we're working through something and conveniently happen to find apparently useful things in past memories, it's that something (anything) triggers a flashback to a past memory that upon closer inspection reveals something that turns out to have had real apparent effects because it resulted in obvious behavioral patterns that multiple other friends have confirmed to us and are only now being placed in proper context with what feels like a proper explanation. This isn't somewhere the proper explanation could be just anything and this isn't schizophrenia where completely unconnected ideas are considered together. The stuff we find in flashbacks can completely surprise us and often has nothing to do with what we think we're looking for or think we're going to get out of it. It sometimes just somehow alludes to something far bigger that we really can corroborate with multiple external sources. Our brain and the others in it play so many tricks on us and on me, I know not to trust any single experience as a source of truth, but it can show me where to look.

> The vastly simpler explanation is that your brain did what brains do best and filled in the gaps in your memory be inventing a story constrained to corroborate with the bare facts you remember, but because LSD it feels so real and vividly detailed that it “must be correct.”

I don't really know how to properly articulate that I've verified anything because it's hard for me to even verify to myself that I know any of the things I've discovered for quite sure, and not just trusting something that very well could have been made up. I know the specific experience of recall is very fabricated, I know that what I see and what I think I identify as different parts while recalling those memories could be completely made up, but I'm not deriving everything from that experience. I use it as a suggestion to guide actual research that is not grounded in flashbacks and feelings and we have discovered actual patterns that are consistent with our theories and that couldn't possibly just be convenient explanations. Past a certain point all of Dissociative Identity Disorder is technically made up in some way (neuroplasticity!) and it's damn near impossible to know with certainty how things work or have worked, but I am taking the same approach that I have always taken and that is using the best explanations and the best theories that I currently have at my disposal and constantly testing and looking for improvements I can make to our understanding of ourselves.

But like I said, I wouldn't even care if it was merely a convenient filling of the gaps, because it has resulted in material good for us, it has resulted in material advancement of our understanding of our own past actions and in discussing them with those who we have hurt in the past, and it has also given us direction on how to better ourselves for the future. It really doesn't seem like that'd be the case unless the gap filling was so good that it correctly accounted for everything we hadn't even figured out yet, everything that we hadn't even heard of from others yet, and basically all of the ways we've been testing and testing the theories and the explanations that we have now.

Even if whatever it gave us access to was not something already stored in our brain, whatever it did was sufficient to allow us to figure things out that could otherwise have taken us months to years or even longer, and we know that they are material things that impact others because they have helped us work through emotions with others who formed those emotions independently of any LSD, based on those past actions of ours which we now better understand.

So I choose to believe we have gained valuable insight as a result of these experiences, not based on the experiences themselves which I know take great creative liberties, but based on everything we've done informed by the experiences to figure things out the old-fashioned way, too.