Is it true what they say about psychedelics helping people to come to terms with their own mortality and death?
Occasionally I'll get crippling anxiety when I think about how one day I'm going to stop existing and there's absolutely nothing I can do to stop that.
I've heard people say that [some drug] has shown them how to no longer fear death and always wondered about that.
I don't think it's possible to make a broad statement like that about psychedelics. You'll always just hear one take from a person with their experience and the experience of the people they might have tried it with or even guided, but the spectrum of experiences is too vast to qualify and quantify it without the actual research.
My personal standpoint is fairly different from yours because my anxiety is permanent and a measure of the "agitation" of my existence, to which death is almost a relief really. From that standpoint I've never quite had to confront much of anything about mortality or death. In fact I've almost always felt more alive during trips, at peace with whatever flowing model of the self and existence experienced in the moment. Psychedelic effects can make our senses feel more 'salient' too (for me musical experiences can be very profound), which I've used to contemplate extremes (like noise-cancellation silence after a roaring musical piece).
The main regularly noticeable thing I experience after just about every trip (of various kinds of psychedelics) is severe depression being alleviated for anywhere between a couple days to a few weeks.
Ultimately though, most of what I would say is just likely to be whatever personal theory I've built up this unique stream of experiences. That's why we really need people to get in there and do the difficult work.
edit: also the "some drug" in question is most likely DMT, and I've had extensive experiences with it (on its own or not) and absolutely appreciate that others would have religious experiences, near-death experiences, etc.. but I don't think anybody with any experience of DMT that goes beyond a one-shot would testify to the reliability of trips of such nature. It can be a very volatile experience, as well as being much less predictable from person to person than the more mild stuff like low doses of mushrooms etc. Again, science might eventually come to the rescue :)
Occasionally I'll get crippling anxiety when I think about how one day I'm going to stop existing and there's absolutely nothing I can do to stop that.
I've heard people say that [some drug] has shown them how to no longer fear death and always wondered about that.