Interpreting past experiences after taking psychedelics

[longdistancerunner]

A friend of mine, after starting to use psychedelics, looked back on past experiences that he knew were special but could never really describe and realized he now understands them much better. When he was only about 12 years old, he was playing in a championship basketball game and even though he was the star player on his team, could not make a shot to save his life in the first period of the game. He kept thinking that he had to play well and score a lot for his team to win, but also to satisfy his own ego as a basketball player. The harder he tried, the more he failed. When he was finally taken out of the game, he became so frustrated with himself that he cracked. He gave up trying, and upon entering the game again, proceeded to score 42 points and hit the game winning shot with 2 seconds left in overtime. He never once played basketball like that again. After extensive use of psychedelics in high school, he believes that incident is a real life example of some of the things he learned from the drugs. That living to satisfy one's own ego through achievements only hinders a person's true potential, weather it be as a basketball player, musician, mathematician or anything. In trying so hard to achieve something, he was only pushed further away from it. It was only at the point where he gave up all hope in himself that his mind was free from expectations and worry and he was at once able to perform at his highest potential. Has anyone else had a similar experience where a past event's true significance was made more clear through the use of psychedelic drugs???

[Heretic.Ape.]

When labmonkey was young he was very unhappy. You know, the usual 13 year old issues of not fitting in, being cool, attractive, et cetera. Well, he got very bent out of shape about how he was not who he thought he should be--basically what he felt other people expected him to be. One day he reached a similar breaking point, and gave up completely on the notion of being anything other than exactly what he was in all it's geeky lameness. He went on to be very happy and popular, dated many very attractive girls and generally had a fantastic teenage experience, never worrying again about whether he seemed totally crazy or not.
Later when having a similar down time of existential bleakness he took some mushrooms and had a very profound experience in which what might be, for lack of a better phrase, the spirit of the mushroom (or his subconscious if you prefer) told him to never worry about anything and that the answer to life was to simply love truth, accept everything and groove with it. He then went on to have a fantastic few years.
Seems every few years monkey just needs an occasional reminder not to take himself so seriously and to take things as they are

[ornithorhynchus]

when i stopped giving a crap about how others view me, my life became better (phenomenon?) i guess it allowed me to be myself around others, and also attracted my current lover and first love into my life. SWIM has found that psychedelics has made him look back on the past and appreciate every choice he has made up to this point. SWIM understands that the felt presence of the now is what matters, and what lays in the past are the journeys and experiences that lead him to this point

[RJeez]

If I am right in understanding what you are saying,then the answer is yes.Tripping seems to magnify experiences,and if you can handle that,then the mundane experience that may cause you problems don't seem so insurmountable,because you have dealt with the experience in its extreme form-in the form of an hallucination,and hallucinations can be a white knuckle ride.Simply put,if you can handle that(a trip),you can handle anything.