A couple of generations ago, folks imagined that taking psychedelic drugs somehow gave them perceptions of a “higher reality” unavailable to normal mortals. Better understanding of how human perceptual systems work has shown that to be bogus. The human brain is a complex, carefully tuned mechanism. Mucking with the system by flooding it with weird chemicals can only interfere with the brain’s best performance. Specifically, psychedelic drugs interfere with the its ability to edit out normal illusions created by mistakes in the sensory systems.
These visual and auditory illusions, however, can really be quite beautiful, and the psychological illusions can be quite enjoyable. My Psychedelia series paintings celebrate the beauty inherent in them.