Do psychedelic drugs actually have a powerful and nearly unexplainable

Yes, they have powerful effects. They can't just change your life by themselves, you need to work with them to have benefits.

Unexplainable? LSD is psycho-active, which means it causes neurons to fire without the usual mental stimulation. This makes thoughts seem to appear in a person's mind without having directly thought about it, making a person feel as though their thoughts have a 'higher truth' devoid of their own personal pitfalls. As for whether or not this process is positive, it depends upon the stimulation given to a person and their mental state before hand. Some people, die hard conservatives for example, have a hard time processing new thoughts so they get spooked by these 'foreign thoughts'. To a young student it can inspire interests in things previously disregarded. To a veteran they'll get flashbacks of things they would rather not to think about.

Speaking for myself I'd say it's wonderful. I was once a very selfish person, trapped in a mental cage of my own design. LSD inspired thoughts of love and joy that I thought I was incapable of, encouraging me to seek out joy in places I would have never expected.

On another note, I'm not convinced of LSD's impact upon music. Psychedelic music was a, as you say, 'cultural consequence'.

>>3049137
>On another note, I'm not convinced of LSD's impact upon music. Psychedelic music was a, as you say, 'cultural consequence'.
Not this anon, and off topic,but an often overlooked drug to the development of musical movements is heroin.

LSD is pretty dope but overrated. Some shit you learn you can come up with by thinking a lot, and a lot of the other thoughts that pop up in your head is jumbled nonsense

>>3048749

>They were then administered a functional fixedness task in which faster completion times indicate greater creative problem-solving ability. Participants reporting classic psychedelic use concurrent with mystical experience (n = 11) exhibited significantly faster times on the functional fixedness task (Cohen's d = -.87; large effect)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27719438


>Consistent with participant claims of hallucinogen-occasioned increases in aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and creativity, we found significant increases in Openness following a high-dose psilocybin session. In participants who had mystical experiences during their psilocybin session, Openness remained significantly higher than baseline more than 1 year after the session. The findings suggest a specific role for psilocybin and mystical-type experiences in adult personality change.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21956378


>Lifetime classic psychedelic use was associated with a significantly reduced odds of past month psychological distress (weighted odds ratio (OR)=0.81 (0.72-0.91)), past year suicidal thinking (weighted OR=0.86 (0.78-0.94)), past year suicidal planning (weighted OR=0.71 (0.54-0.94)), and past year suicide attempt (weighted OR=0.64 (0.46-0.89)), whereas lifetime illicit use of other drugs was largely associated with an increased likelihood of these outcomes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25586402


>The present data indicate that ayahuasca enhances creative divergent thinking. They suggest that ayahuasca increases psychological flexibility, which may facilitate psychotherapeutic interventions and support clinical trial initiatives.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27435062