This, but in kind of a dark way.

A well-known trope among counterculture types is that it can "lift the veil" and let you see through layers of obfuscation that have been put around society and reality by The Man™️. And in my experience, I have found this to be quite true.

The dark part is, sometimes it helps me realize that I, am, in fact, The Man sometimes.

That is to say, I will realize that I have in fact put layers of obfuscation between my perception and my own reality, which serve as extremely comforting separations between my current self, both in situation and effort, and the material reality of the current state of my life and the actions I am taking within it.

So things like, oh I don't have enough money to maintain my lifestyle much longer, I'm not making enough effort to better my skillset to improve my career prospects, I am not putting in the work to keep my important social relationships healthy - these are very distressing thoughts, but I am a master as rationalizing and finding ways to justify these things to myself so that I can just kinda skate by and make it to another day.

But sometimes when I imbibe on the magical buds (not every time, mind you), I find that even my own self-made illusions are lifted, and I see my own negative contributions to these situations and the impending consequences looming before me that I've been happily ignoring. It's often quite distressing and can be a very anxious experience, but in taking a moment and examining the situation, it can be pretty clear its not just reefer-madness induced paranoia, but its actually just the real actual depressing situation I've put myself in, and I really actually have been avoiding dealing with it. The veil is lifted from my own self-delusion and I see my own bullshit for what it is.

It has seriously led to some of my most important self-renaissance changes in crucial moments throughout my life. Not every time, of course, and truthfully it sometimes makes the negative consequences of some things so much easier to bear that it can remove a major impetus from making some changes. But it absolutely does raise awareness more often than not, and sometimes the things it helps with are bigger than just "I should get off my lazy ass", and having something that can almost instantly alleviate a random dark cloud mood can really be incredible sometimes.