your take on natural drugs: weed, shrooms, ayahuasca, cactcii and so on.

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i have read a lot about all kinds of psychedelics over the last months (and years), and seen lots of vids on the subject. there was one i saw a few days ago with a panel of psychiatrists and researchers. very good vid. i'll post it under here.

*the thing with psychedelics is that they can provide 15 years of therapy in one session.

*some people can get mental disorders from them, and this usually happens to young people 15-20 years old, when these mental disorders usually shows up anyway. and when they take massive doses (more or less OD)

*many people regard them as preventive medicine too. like changing the oil in engine before it blows up.

*one doesn't have to take the max dose the first time. and only an idiot would do that. (and this is why people get mental disorders). maybe try a small amount and work your way up. its not very hard to find out what a small/regular/very strong/ego death dose of something is.

*its not something to be afraid of, but you need to have respect. its not exactly candy. really potent weed can be just as psychologically heavy and scary or much worse.

here are some vids i found interesting. second is that panel talk, it starts in about 10min in.
third vid is an interview with a guy that has a tv show, he has a good perspective on things.

Thanks for the links! I put the first two on in the background. Michael Pollan has a foreword at the beginning of the second video, before the discussion panel. There is a whole heap of his stuff on youtube. I enjoyed the discussion.

My interest in it is from the cognitive psychology angle. I do find the cross over with spirituality interesting from an anthropology point of view as well.

I suppose since you have expressed interest in the experience, do you have an outcome you are seeking? Or is it purely about the experience?
 
Thanks for the links! I put the first two on in the background. Michael Pollan has a foreword at the beginning of the second video, before the discussion panel. There is a whole heap of his stuff on youtube. I enjoyed the discussion.

My interest in it is from the cognitive psychology angle. I do find the cross over with spirituality interesting from an anthropology point of view as well.

I suppose since you have expressed interest in the experience, do you have an outcome you are seeking? Or is it purely about the experience?

i think the common outcome is that you get enlightened about whats important and whats not in your life.
from what i have read almost all psychedelics will give you a very profound and spiritual experience.

there are some questions i have that i feel i deserve to get answered.
the hard questions...

What is the meaning of life? What's it all about?
Why are we here?
What are we here for?
What is the nature of life?
What is the nature of reality?
What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of one's life?
What is meaningful and valuable in life?
What is the reason to live? What are we living for?

yeah i just copied those from Meaning of life - Wikipedia but you get the point.
 
i think the common outcome is that you get enlightened about whats important and whats not in your life.
from what i have read almost all psychedelics will give you a very profound and spiritual experience.

there are some questions i have that i feel i deserve to get answered.
the hard questions...

What is the meaning of life? What's it all about?
Why are we here?
What are we here for?
What is the nature of life?
What is the nature of reality?
What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of one's life?
What is meaningful and valuable in life?
What is the reason to live? What are we living for?

yeah i just copied those from Meaning of life - Wikipedia but you get the point.

Haha!

I am not sure you'll get the answer to most of those :p

From what I have read etc..

enlightened about whats important and whats not in your life
What is meaningful and valuable in life?

These might get answered :)
 
(Personally I am very, very intrigued at the concept of ego death/dissolution and what seeing your sense of identity being stripped away might be like.)
 
i think the common outcome is that you get enlightened about whats important and whats not in your life.
from what i have read almost all psychedelics will give you a very profound and spiritual experience.

there are some questions i have that i feel i deserve to get answered.
the hard questions...

What is the meaning of life? What's it all about?
Why are we here?
What are we here for?
What is the nature of life?
What is the nature of reality?
What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of one's life?
What is meaningful and valuable in life?
What is the reason to live? What are we living for?

yeah i just copied those from Meaning of life - Wikipedia but you get the point.

Good luck getting answers to those questions with psychedelics. While I know quite a number of people who had "wow!" experiences on drugs or who found insights that seemed profound in the moment I've never met anyone who grew what I would call wise through the use of drugs. I think you are in realm of religion and, to a lesser extent, philosophy.
 
Good luck getting answers to those questions with psychedelics.

I read it as being tongue in cheek ;).

Some psychedelics are reported to elicit a sense of 'connectedness' and evoke a 'spiritual' experience (whatever these terms mean). I think @inferno is anticipating that these experiences could help him reevaluate what he finds to be meaningful.

Speaking of religion and philosophy. I'll be mildly provocative and assert that "What is the meaning of life?" is a pointless question 😬
 
Speaking of religion and philosophy. I'll be mildly provocative and assert that "What is the meaning of life?" is a pointless question 😬

From a purely materialistic perspective I would agree although perhaps with some qualifiers. For the believers in a truly existent self that extends over more-or-less linear infinite time (very roughly the view of the Abrahamic religions) or for those who believe in a rather more cyclic view of time coupled with much more varied notions of the nature or existence of self (big umbrella here for the major South and East Asian religions) the meaning of life or perhaps the more fundamental nature of existence/reality gains some importance.
 
What is the meaning of life? What's it all about? Cooking, knives and eating
Why are we here? Because someone has to eat the piggies
What are we here for? Dinner!
What is the nature of life? The food chain
What is the nature of reality? Prepping and cooking takes a while, thus spawning fast food
What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of one's life? To contribute to the overall prep and cooking duties
What is meaningful and valuable in life? Duck and lamb
What is the reason to live? What are we living for? Dinner!
 
From a purely materialistic perspective I would agree although perhaps with some qualifiers. For the believers in a truly existent self that extends over more-or-less linear infinite time (very roughly the view of the Abrahamic religions) or for those who believe in a rather more cyclic view of time coupled with much more varied notions of the nature or existence of self (big umbrella here for the major South and East Asian religions) the meaning of life or perhaps the more fundamental nature of existence/reality gains some importance.

Nice considered reply! :)

Whether a belief system indicates what the underlying nature of reality/existence is, they uniformly acknowledge our agency. While they may have frameworks for morality/purpose, the agency we have allows us to determine our own 'path' (albeit, with some systems imposing more constraints than others). And therein lies the opportunity for us to discover our own route to 'meaning'! It can't be universal....
 
if one travels to amsterdam for example where everyone is high all the time and the whole place smells like weed you would understand that this is much more preferable than drunk people by a factor of 1000 or so. if i go out on a friday/saturday here its all just drunk, loud, yelling people wanting to fight. knives, rapes, you name it. if anything decreases IQ its alcohol.

I'm sure you know that this is a blatant exaggeration, I don;t think it helps this conversation in any way.
 
I suppose since you have expressed interest in the experience, do you have an outcome you are seeking? Or is it purely about the experience?

ok i'll try to answer seriously.

i dont really think one needs to have some disease or problems or similar to take these things, and that they will magically cure you.
why not just take them and see what happens, and see where it takes you? whats wrong with that? there is always something to learn.

when we were young we did shrooms a couple of times, not for therapy, but just to have fun. now this was over 20 years ago so its a bit cloudy but i think i felt the calmest calm in the universe, never felt so calm and relaxed in my entire life. and you finally understood how you were connected to the universe and nature. there was some minor visual distortions like walls starting to breathe and colors of stuff changed a bit. and things could "talk" to you, you could hear/feel what stuff felt. and you could hear/feel what people were thinking (no joke).

but the good part was that it opened up a new way of thinking, and you could access your deepest problems. you can lie to everyone, you can lie to yourself, but not on shrooms you cant! no escape there. we did this in groups of 4-7 friends and had very deep and completely honest discussions about everything. and in the end it was very therapeutic and beautiful. its a medicine if you ask me. and its also a very long lasting one too.

------

also about 20 years or so ago i tried some HBWS seeds (LSA), and that experience was like, i dont know, worth 5 years of psychotherapy i guess. i got an incredible stomach pain for several hours. but there was also this ultra deep introspective thoughts that i could not escape from. and it forced me to confront my problems and solve them there and then. i felt like i had matured mentally 5 years after that. its was very taxing during the experience but afterwards it was very rewarding.

----------

now none of my friends that took the shrooms has ever had any psychological problems afterwards, and i mean any. and psychological problems is new black it seems like, i mean the whole world has gone ****ing crazy. and its getting worse by the hour. just open up a paper, any paper. but my shroom friends stay sane somehow. surprise surprise.
 
In the radio series and the first novel, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7 1⁄2 million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. Deep Thought points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed it never actually knew what the question was.[4]

When asked to produce the Ultimate Question, Deep Thought says that it cannot; however, it can help to design an even more powerful computer that can. This new computer will incorporate living beings into the "computational matrix" and will run for ten million years. The computer is revealed as being the planet Earth, with its pan-dimensional creators assuming the form of white lab mice to observe its running.
 
Just for convenience, I organized these into bullsh*t

What is the meaning of life? What's it all about?
Why are we here?
What are we here for?
What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of one's life?

and not bullsh*t.


What is the nature of life?
What is the nature of reality?
What is meaningful and valuable in life?
What is the reason to live? What are we living for?

😜
 
In my experience, LSD was an amplification of my imagination. for example, When someone told a story it was very vivid. At the peak I could mess with my friends (who were on acid too), making them believe that one of two identical spoons were heavier, lighter, bigger or colder. Gave me some very cool insights and a massive ego death:) Fun experience, wouldn't do it again soon though.
I'd like to hear more about making knives on acid though hahaha!! @Kippington
 
i dont really think one needs to have some disease or problems or similar to take these things, and that they will magically cure you.
why not just take them and see what happens, and see where it takes you? whats wrong with that?

Hehe... sorry if I sounded judgemental. Of course you dont need a reason. I just thought you wouldn't be doing it totally arbitrarily either! I was curious :)


the whole world has gone ****ing crazy

Yeah... 😞... Its easy to throw hyperbole in there like "end of days"... It isnt... but things do look pretty systemically broken.
 
Hehe... sorry if I sounded judgemental. Of course you dont need a reason. I just thought you wouldn't be doing it totally arbitrarily either! I was curious :)




Yeah... 😞... Its easy to throw hyperbole in there like "end of days"... It isnt... but things do look pretty systemically broken.

no you didn't sound judgemental. dont worry.
 
To get back to the original thread, however momentarily, I'm curious if anyone here has, hypothetically speaking, tried Salvia divinorum? I'm also a bit surprised that only @inferno has mentioned Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds. I can't personally speak to either.

As to the legalization question I think both Prohibition (no legal alcohol sales in the USA from 1920 to 1933) and the War on Drugs can be fairly characterized as abject failures. They have been, however, effectively been a gift to organized crime in North America, Europe, Columbia, Afghanistan, and a number of other countries. I haven't given a great deal of thought to what a more rational legal structure might look like but I think some sort of controlled access for those 25+ to drugs of known purity and strength is not an altogether crazy idea. For the USA as a country that allows almost any idiot to get and keep a driving license, or to too often keep driving after their license has been suspended or revoked, to buy a gun merely by virtue of being at least 18 years old, to possess a gun at almost any age in most states, then to have a particularly draconian legal structure with regard to "recreational" drugs seems mad to me. We'll put aside for now discussion of the global legal pharmaceutical industry which often behaves rather like organized crimes and all too frequently produces appallingly shoddy research, as a separate issue.
 
I have enjoyed this discussion so far! Thanks to everyone for responding & participating in a mature & respectful manner.

(Personally I am very, very intrigued at the concept of ego death/dissolution and what seeing your sense of identity being stripped away might be like.)

I want to throw out a little caution here. Every report I have read on the experience of ego death emphasizes the very 'real' sensation of death. Meaning that your life, your connection to your family & your loved ones, your hopes, dreams, and ambitions are all fading away and not coming back. That is a terrifying thing to read and write out, but I have to feel that barely scratches the surface of what actually going through the experience feels like. In a lot of ways, it's the psychological equivalent of going bungee jumping with an invisible rope that you can't see or feel. You will come back from the experience, but if you can't surrender into it and let go of control, it's very likely you are going to have a bad time.

So this is not something I would chase unless you are very grounded & comfortable in your reality, have a good pool of experience with lesser dosages, and are in a loving, safe, and supportive environment. You have expressed how you fear it's not worth the gamble - so I mention this more for anyone who happens to be browsing and feels similarly.

Good luck getting answers to those questions with psychedelics. While I know quite a number of people who had "wow!" experiences on drugs or who found insights that seemed profound in the moment I've never met anyone who grew what I would call wise through the use of drugs. I think you are in realm of religion and, to a lesser extent, philosophy.

Agreed. Ram Dass more or less came around to this view, which should say something...

There's a book called Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences that I felt was an interesting read. The author, William Richards, first got involved with psychedelic therapy in the '60s in Germany, then went on to do (legal) research with these substances in Maryland for decades. He has been influential in re-starting research with psilocybin at Johns Hopkins with Roland Griffiths - leading to the development of their Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research. So he has probably done more therapy sessions than anyone else in America save Stan Grof.

Not for everyone, of course. If you're talking about mystical/religious experiences, it has to involve some suspension of disbelief. If you're a stone cold skeptic, realist, or atheist - you'll probably find it all baloney. But I thought it was thoughtful and open-minded, with lots of details about their research and methodology at Johns Hopkins.
 
Every report I have read on the experience of ego death emphasizes the very 'real' sensation of death. Meaning that your life, your connection to your family & your loved ones, your hopes, dreams, and ambitions are all fading away and not coming back.
But there are some upsides to the same feeling, namely that your time on Earth is a finite commodity: It's valuable, worth investing in and spending wisely.

I've been on a few acid trips with my brother. He had a horrendous ego death... from his point of view, but it was entertaining for me!
We were sitting on a park bench out on a beautiful day, and he bolted up, dropped everything he was holding and sprinted away for a short distance, then slowly turned around and sheepishly walked back. I asked him what that was all about, and he said he felt the need to run away from some physical manifestation of death. It occurred to me (who carries a parrot around everywhere) that he had the same instinctual flight reflex - as in 'fight or flight' - that my bird will sometimes get just as he gets startled by nothing and flies away for no apparent reason. We had a laugh about it, and how my parrot was the more chill one at the time, then we headed home.
Later, he was convinced our mother (who is gravely ill) had only minutes left to live. He wanted to see her at that moment, and it took a lot of work on my behalf trying to explain to him that driving 40km across the city on a head full of LSD was a terrible idea.

The experience completely changed my brother's life for the better. Within a few months he quit computer games, moved out of mum's place, quit working a hotel job and got a new one at Volkswagon, started driving a new car company around, rented a new apartment in the city, got multiple lady friends....

Ego death is an interesting thing, but quite impossible to put into words, and the experience will differ differ from person to person anyway.

I'd like to hear more about making knives on acid though hahaha!! @Kippington
It's really fun!

I start my usual knife-making routine, but the acid makes me question if the specific action I'm doing is correct, or if it even has any significance at all. It's a very confusing feeling, but I knuckle down and complete the task, then I move onto the next thing and get the same fundamental questions running through my head. Before I know it, I have a beautiful finished object in my hands - born new to this world - and my brain can't quite add up how it got there...

Doing knives on LSD? Man I'm so afraid you are going to cut yourself, you know... :p

The knives generally aren't sharp until the very end. It's surprisingly difficult to get hurt if you understand the dangers and have control over the tools you're using. Accidentally grabbing something hot is one of the biggest dangers, but it's not like you'll keep holding onto it. A small burn isn't the end of the world.
 
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But there are some upsides to the same feeling, namely that your time on Earth is a finite commodity: It's valuable, worth investing in and spending wisely.

I've been on a few acid trips with my brother. He had a horrendous ego death... from his point of view, but it was entertaining for me!
We were sitting on a park bench out on a beautiful day, and he bolted up, dropped everything he was holding and sprinted away for a short distance, then slowly turned around and sheepishly walked back. I asked him what that was all about, and he said he felt the need to run away from some physical manifestation of death. It occurred to me (who carries a parrot around everywhere) that he had the same instinctual flight reflex - as in 'fight or flight' - that my bird will sometimes get just as he gets startled by nothing and flies away for no apparent reason. We had a laugh about it, and how my parrot was the more chill one at the time, then we headed home.
Later, he was convinced our mother (who is gravely ill) had only minutes left to live. He wanted to see her at that moment, and it took a lot of work on my behalf trying to explain to him that driving 40km across the city on a head full of LSD was a terrible idea.

The experience completely changed my brother's life for the better. Within a few months he quit computer games, moved out of mum's place, quit working a hotel job and got a new one at Volkswagon, started driving a new car company around, rented a new apartment in the city, got multiple lady friends....

Ego death is an interesting thing, but quite impossible to put into words, and the experience will differ differ from person to person anyway.


It's really fun!

I start my usual knife-making routine, but the acid makes me question if the specific action I'm doing is correct, or if it even has any significance at all. It's a very confusing feeling, but I knuckle down and complete the task, then I move onto the next thing and get the same fundamental questions running through my head. Before I know it, I have a beautiful finished object in my hands - born new to this world - and my brain can't quite add up how it got there...



The knives generally aren't sharp until the very end. It's surprisingly difficult to get hurt if you understand the dangers and have control over the tools you're using. Accidentally grabbing something hot is one of the biggest dangers, but it's not like you'll keep holding onto it. A small burn isn't the end of the world.

Didn’t you shred your thumb while grinding at some point? Or am I thinking of someone else... 🤔
 
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