u/solsolico

Firstly, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to share their experience. I’m not claiming to know anything. I’m just explaining my thought process so you understand where I’m coming from. This isn’t a CMV and I’m not arguing the aphorism is undue. I’m skeptical of how it’s used, how it shaped my own interpretations, and I want clarity so I don’t overapply it.

I see this aphorism plastered everywhere. I don't know what it means apart from, "stop taking psychedelics, you don't need them anymore". The question is in how that inference was made in the first place.

The only time it ever made sense to me was after one particular trip, and like many trips, it had a lot of different parts and different experiences, many of which were ontologically unsettling and unpleasant, but one of the "lessons" was: the search never ends, and there’s no ultimate truth waiting at the end of it

I wrote the story in this comment if you're curious.

I stayed away from shrooms for 10 months because I thought I "got the message", so I "hung up the phone". The message I interpreted was something like "stop taking mushrooms, there are no answers to be found, only fear to be felt". This was not my first "bad trip", nor was it even close to my worst (for reference, my worst one was thinking I had to kill myself to end the simulation and its suffering, but when I sobered up, I just felt like, "damn, that was so powerful and my whole perspective on life has changed for the better"). I think a combination of the fear and the "there is no real end or truth" combined together to connect me to the aphorism.

Anyway, I ended up doing a low dose trip a couple weeks ago with my buddy, and that trip was really awesome, and I even had a few insights I've since integrated into my behaviour / worldview. So looking back, that whole “I got the message” thing I felt 10 months ago, now feels like total BS and it feels like I just shoehorned that aphorism onto the closest experience I had, because that aphorism is everywhere in psychedelic spaces, so it was the first thing my brain grabbed onto as an interpretive lens.

Then today, I read a brief discussion (will post it right below in italics) and it got me thinking about the super subjective, abstract nature of the aphorism and how: what if it collapses a whole spectrum of phenomenological experiences into one vague phrase? And whether the phrase is so overapplied that it becomes a template people unconsciously force themselves into?

--------

Person 1: It's like Alan Watts said about psychedelics : Once you get the message, hang up the phone.

Person 2: He was quoting Ram Das.

Person 3: Both are kind of full of themselves, Watts especially was. He had multiple failed marriages, was barely present in his kids lifes and died in his 50s from alcoholism lol, he clearly didn't get the message.

The real secret is the phone doesn't exist, you're talking to yourself. You probably shouldn't hang up unless you can stay on the call when sober, enlightenment is a journey not a destination. Anyone telling you about it has probably already forgot it. Even Jiddu Krishnamurti didn't really embody it and struggled with materialism, ego and uncontrolled lust, even though he absolutely experienced non-duality when sober, what he described as "the process" in private journals that came out after his death.

Person 2: So because Watts is a flawed messenger, we should stay on the phone even after we get the message?

Person 3: I'm saying Watts clearly didn't get the message. There is no "phone" everything you experience on psychedelics is created by your own mind. You are talking to yourself

---------

So I want to ask you guys, you who all have felt like you've "got the message and hung up the phone", what was that like? Was it an intense fear? Was it a realization the psychedelics were a crutch for you? Was it a realization you weren't integrating anything? Was it something like, "I found the cheat codes to life"? What was it? How did you make the inference that the message was to never do psyches again? I don't know. I can imagine it being so many different things and I imagine there will be a large array of different experiences that caused the inference.

Thanks to again!

I had this thought / realization about a month ago. I don't know if it's meaningful, or interesting or just mumbo-jumbo bullshit but I think it's at least somewhat interesting and would like to hear some other people's thoughts about it.

It's mid-April and the snow is in the process of melting. I'm walking through this park nearby where I live. I walk through it pretty frequently.

On my right side, there's a big field with a couple baseball diamonds. On my left side, there’s this little forested area and then the still-frozen river beyond it.

So I'm looking to the left... and something about the foresty area looks different, and I don't like it. “It looks like they've cut down some trees. I remember it looking more forested before”. And that pisses me off. So this anger kinda radiates through my body

I start trying to figure out what it really was, what actually changed. I stop in the middle of the walking path, and just stare at the trees and all, thinking. I notice these circles of ice scattered across the dark, damp grass, like lily pads on a pond, and I think, "maybe that’s where tree stumps used to be and they cut them out?"

I feel confident in that explanation for a few seconds. Smart!

Then I feel like a dumbass.

I think, "That doesn’t make any sense, why would they cut down trees in the middle of March? And even if they did, how would they remove the stumps? It's winter in the Canadian prairies". I feel embarrassed that I even thought that that could be the case.

Then I think, "Okay, but it does look very different. It’s probably because a lot of the snow has melted. So now there’s grass and snow on the ground together. And the last time I was in this park, the last 20 times, it was just snow, pure whiteness."

That’s when I have the realization: "I can either view this as novelty, or view it angrily, as unwanted change.". You know, like all of us I guess, I wonder, "why do I experience less novelty as I age?" Like the emotion of novelty.

So I start thinking, "Ohh... novelty and change are actually the same thing. They’re just different framings". So I try to start looking at this forest with novelty now, instead, and I think, "this actually looks pretty cool and interesting". I stay staring at it, immersing myself in it for a minute or two, and then I keep walking onto my destination.

But I keep thinking, "Maybe as we get older, we start being less happy with or interested in change. We start disliking change, and that is why we don’t experience novelty, but the novelty is still there, still allowing us to feel it, if we let ourselves feel it".

At first, I was like, “it looks different” and automatically, without even giving it a chance, “I don’t like this”. It was an automatic rejection of change, and experiencing that rejection as dislike and frustration. Yet, when I had that epiphany, I was able to experience it as novelty.

Pre-summary

This piece is me pondering why scrolling feels so icky and meaningless in a way watching TV commercials never did, and my current hypothesis is that it’s because scrolling has basically wiped out the negative space in my life. If that sounds interesting to you, you might want to read the post. If not, hopefully this brief summary saved you some time!!!

Some background on me and my history with smart-phones / dumb-phones

I got a smart phone in November 2025. Nothing fancy, a first gen iPhone SE.

It was given to me for free a year prior, but I never used it. The battery was shot and it wouldn't even hold a charge while being plugged in. Originally was just going to use it as a dictation device because it has a good speech-to-text system.

Anyway, I bought a replacement battery for it in October 2025 because I was going to be abroad for a month and thought, fuck it, why not? Let's properly keep in touch with everyone back home.

Before this, I had had a dumb-phone ever since I dropped my iPhone on the floor at my job back in 2017 and cracked its screen.

Even before it cracked, I had been considering getting rid of the smartphone for a while. But I owned it. so it was like a sunken cost type ordeal. Breaking it gave me "permission" to move on, or something like that

Like I remember I used to routinely spend like 20 minutes on the toilet looking at things on my phone, and would get those red spots on my quads from the pressure of my resting elbows.

Along the way from 2017 to 2025, I ended up having three different dumbphones. Two of them broke.

I also worked as a resident manger at an apartment complex from May 2023 to September 2025, and so I had a work-phone then too, but didn't use it for much other than work-related tasks. I used the voice-to-text to write down some of my ideas and thoughts, to check bus schedules, and to make personal phone calls, just because the quality was better than my flip-phone's.

The present day

So fast forward to 2026... I had come to really like the smartphone.

Reading reddit conversations on a chair outside? Fuck yeah!

And archiving ideas and thoughts quickly with voice‑to‑text lifts the mental burden of trying to remember them, which really opens up space for new insights and just gives me the capacity to be present instead of being in the "don't forget this" mode.

A decent camera in my pocket? Fuck yeah!

But now in May 2026, I've noticed my usage has slowly become worse and worse. Between workout sets. Between commercials. Sometimes even during movies or TV shows. Every time I eat.

I only have 1gb of data so I don't use it on the bus, or outside. Nor does it seem to take much away from my life. When I'm hanging out with people, no phone. When I'm working on my creative projects, no phone. My scrolling problem is miniscule compared to most people's. But it has robbed me of something I didn't know how to put into words until today.

It has colonized the negative space of my life.

Negative space

Negative space in any art form is simply what’s not being used on the medium, could be: the silence of the guitar where a note could be plucked, the empty part of the stage in theater, the blank areas on a painting...

But negative spaces exist in our life too. Like the moments I said up there: between sets at the gym, eating, TV commercials, etc.

I only scroll during the negative spaces of my life. It doesn't stop me from reading books, or making music, or writing a story, or writing a long form post such as this. It doesn't steal me from conversations with my friends.

Alright, I used to be a big Raptors fan back in 2016 to 2019; used to watch almost every game. I would stand watching the games mostly, and during commercials (negative space)... I'd dance, or I'd just talk to myself out loud (introspection, thoughts, theories, ideas, etc.).

Or when we used to watch TV together and we'd make fun of the TV ads.

Anyone remember when "phone people" used to be made fun of for pulling phones out during ads? Seriously, we used to clown people who pulled out their phones during fucking TV ads way back when, rofl.

Now, I've even heard some people argue that Netflix now makes movies that you can easily follow while scrolling your phone the whole time. Haven't looked too much into this, though.

Anyway, the negative space of our lives. I haven't pondered its importance too much yet. But it seems to me a lot of micro-stuff used to happen in the negative space of my life before scrolling colonized it all.

Dancing didn't feel icky. Talking to myself didn't feel icky. Clowning commercials didn't feel icky. Eating food while thinking of something embarrassing I did a year ago didn't feel icky. It felt embarrassing, but not icky.

The scrolling ickyness

I have identified this "icky" feeling that I feel during scrolling and afterwards. It's hard to explain, but you probably feel it too. It starts with the compulsion to pick up the phone. Then I'm in the "scrolling mental mode" and I feel almost a dissociation from myself and time.

Alright, when people say "be present", what they mean is suspend your "autonoetic consciousness". Your autonoetic consciousness is when you're thinking about the past, the future, or hypothetical situations.

So let's say you're walking down the street and you're thinking about your job. That's autonoetic. Let's say you're looking at the trees and thinking, "some of these trees have more of a lime green hue". That's the present. Let's say you're thinking about your ideal wife or husband. That's autonoetic. Let's say you're rejoicing in the breeze. That's the present.

What the fuck is scrolling? It's not the present, not really. Even watching a movie is the present, unless you're thinking about "what would I do if I was the main character?", then it's the autonoetic.

How can it be the present when we're constantly rejecting things? Skim a comment here, skip 10 posts, read a couple in full, skip 15 more posts until we find one to skim for 20 seconds. That's not the present. Nor is it the autonoetic, because we're spectating. The autonoetic is very active and very much about the self.

So this scrolling ickyness... even when I feel it, it can be hard to just put the phone down. And even after I put it down, the ickyness remains, sometimes for the rest of the day until I wake up.

I felt it really strong today, which is what got me thinking about why it feels icky.

So, why?

Like, the desktop feels different. It doesn't feel icky. It can feel icky in its own way, but only if I'm on for like 3 or more hours straight. Well, I perhaps because the desktop isn't negative space. It's intentional.

A lot of people talk about slop, and memes, and all.

But my scrolling is mostly Reddit. And my Reddit usage is mostly inquisitive and "intellectual". I don't say this to float my ego, but rather to make my next point.

Scrolling Reddit still feels icky and watching commercials doesn't. Reading the comment section in r/AskPhilosophy feels icky. Reading the comment section in r/HotNewScience feels icky. I'm not talking about scrolling about on r/oddlysatisfying here! Even reading a high quality news article feels icky when it's done during negative space, too.

So perhaps, that icky feeling is here because the thing that scrolling replaced, what I used to do and experience and feeling during my life's negative space, had more meaning or some latent function.

Or perhaps it's because scrolling isn't present nor autonoetic.

I dunno, just some thoughts. Y'all got anything to add, or disagree with?