Have you ever used psychoactive drugs before, and if so, did they alter your personal philosophy or leave any lasting impressions on how you view the world? What actions/thoughts let you to these conclusions?

While most people will tell you that nature is a better environment for most psychedelic trips (and I would agree but for a lack of experience), I had the opportunity to take mushrooms in the middle of New York City. The majority of my trip after the standard "I'm on mushrooms" fare was focused around examining how my position in the room influenced how I regarded the objects in it (more of an artistic/visual insight), but eventually I began to think about all the people outside my window and had sort of an anti-spiritual experience. All I "realized" was that people are ultimately motivated by an attempt to justify their existence, and that despite often drastic differences in the means, we all seek the same end. Even with this similar goal, the fact that people attempt to reach it so differently made me think that it is impossible to justify one's own existence, and yet that does not necessarily mean that the attempt itself is pointless. I think my reasoning at the time was that if there were an objective "truth" to existence, people would be guided by basic principles that would prevent the majority of ideological conflicts that seem so prevalent today.

It should be apparent that these realizations (only briefly summarized here) were heavily influenced by all the existentialist writings that I'd been reading for the past few months, and looking back on the trip perhaps I was just thinking of a shroomed-up version of basic absurdism. While the insight seemed profound at the time and the comedown felt really good, I'm not sure if I even believe any of it now, despite the fact that it only happened 2 months ago. Nonetheless, I am interested in your experiences with philosophy and drugs. If possible, keep it objective/secular/non-spiritual, because while I'm sure that you learned a lot from talking to your spirit animal, threads that allow discussion of hallucinations tend to derail into people using overly vague terms that they don't define and talking about how they met God (see 420chan).

Pic related because I'm pretty sure that the block I could see out my window while tripping was the area that served as the inspiration for the set of Rear Window.