Interestingly, one of the reasons people who take psychedelics inhabit such altered states is that this class of drug can also interrupt binding processes. It seems likely that this, too, contributes to a suspension of the feeling of being a self, distinct and separate from the world. Pollan points out that “our sense of individuality and separateness hinges on a bounded self and a clear demarcation between subject and object. But all that may be a mental construction, a kind of illusion.”
