Psychedelics

[Xicano]

After reading the thread "I don't think pot should be legalized" this excerpt from a Terence McKenna lecture titled "Tree of Knowledge" came to mind. Its just one of the many points-of-view I agree with Terence McKenna on regarding psychedelics. Just thought I'd share it.

Terence McKenna -- Tree of Knowledge:


...I feel like I should say this. Its more for my ease rather than yours. I've reached the conclusions I now espouse through skepticism, reason, rationalism and tough argument. So it may sound bitsy, flakey and soft-headed, but that just because you're hearing it wrong. The guiding input was experience, and in a way what we're gathered here to talk about tonight is an experience. Which is not only rare, transformative, challenging, but, also, for reasons which we're probably get around to, illegal.

So it’s a very peculiar situation. Very few experiences are illegal, and our models of the world are built up based on our experience. So if you make an experience illegal, you're essentially saying it is off-limits for model building. You can't include that in your model because it isn't really there in some sense. And this is the situation in western society visive the psychedelic experience. To my mind the psychedelic experience is as much a part of being human as sexuality, personal independence, child rearing. These are the things which are scripted into us as opportunities for exercising our peculiar situation visive the phenomenon of being, and a society which would deny that is a society who's secret, or maybe not so secret, agenda is the infantilization of its citizens.

I mean if we're not capable of dealing with these things, then, who is? And are the people who made the rules; did they carefully, conscientiously and at depth explore these dimensions and decide they were unfit for human consumption? Or was it done more hastily, more mindlessly and with more fear? I would submit to you that it’s the later.

--snip--

Well, my notion to legitimate the importance of psychedelics is by showing, and I think one can show in fairly short order, that these things are not alien to the human experience, or ancillary, or the province of uneducated little brown people down in the rain forest, or anything like that. I submit to you that the psychedelic experience and the impact of psychedelic plants on human beings is central to understanding who we are and how we got this way. And if we can explore this issue and convince ourselves that there's some merit in this point-of-view, then it will simply, it will do more than rewrite the annals of a stayed science like anthropology. It will actually change how we relate to each other and to the planet that we're in the process of grinding into pollution.

[villager]

1. Already unrecced by the thought police!

Telling, indeed...

[Xicano]

2. Yes telling, indeed..

I mean not even a discussion about it? Reminds me of the reaction towards Joycelyn Elders comment about maybe we (as a society) should re-look at the war-on-drugs and maybe consider legalizing some of them.

[dionysus]

4. mine makes +15

[Gregorian]

3. I just realized something. There are no tripping republicans.

I like this discussion, as I found psychedelics to be a pivotal phenomenon in my youth. Something which was a mile post. And now I'm just a straight old man. And I feel lacking. And stale. All because of exactly what is discussed. Removal of an experience from society. That act alone should not be allowed.

[Blue_In_AK]

5. I LOVE psychedelics.

To this very day I love psychedelics, and I'm 64 years old! :hippie:

[tavalon]

8. I never, ever loved them

They were hard on my body and my psyche. That said, I wouldn't give up what I learned from them, not for anything.

[reggie the dog]

11. I still smoke hash and grass pretty much every day

with some LSD, shrooms or MDMA about once a year for good measure and I am 31

[walldude]

15. I'm 47 and still going....

Not nearly as much as I used to but a good concert or a special movie release are good excuses to ingest some shrooms.

Going to see Roger Waters in a few weeks, been saving some shrooms for that one :)

[Swamp Rat]

6. k&r

[tavalon]

7. I'm a firm advocate of legalizing all drugs and making information

readily available. I'm a longtime subscriber of Erowid, so I put my money where my mouth is. The really hilarious thing is that I've finished the experimental drug stage of my life and don't even smoke pot (never liked that particular one) so it isn't for selfish reasons that I want this. I think it is usually best to treat people like the adults you hope they will behave like.

And yeah, psychedelics informed many of my spiritual beliefs. Hell, they taught me more than the whole of my years in school about the essential oneness of all. Okay, I'll shut up now - I'm starting to sound like Guru Blah Blah.

[AlbertCat]

23. the essential oneness of all.

whatever that means :eyes:


You don't need drugs. Science tells you clearly that we are actually made of the same particles as everything else. It's not all warm and fuzzy like "spiritual" nonsense, but unlike supernatural, vague notions, it's real and concrete.

I'm convinced religion started because some caveman ate the wrong mushroom.

All spirituality aside: you liked it because it made you feel good. Period.And that's OK... After all, your trips, hallucinations, and feelings, before and after, are due to chemicals in your brain... period. So are your memories, likes and dislikes. There's nothing to support Descartian Duality. It's an illusion. It's time to just drop it.

[tavalon]

24. Dude, you don't know me and you read a lot of someone else in my post

I agree with your last statement.

[Tsiyu]

9. Coast to Coast

has a guest on now talking about this.

Using psychedelics to treat PTSD and other disorders,

But there is so much fear from people's upbringing and society's stereotypes.

It will be awesome when the fogies are gone...and i'm a fogie...

[NBachers]

10. I haven't tripped in a long time, but not a day goes by that I don't acknowledge the experience

I remember going to the San Francisco Green Festival a few years back, when McKenna was still around. He gave a presentation. The crowd who showed up was just an amazing group of people- people you tend to think aren't around anymore. But there we all were- what a great experience to share with all those beautiful, open-minded fellow travelers.

I don't know when my next trip will be, but I know I haven't taken my last one.

On that note, an acquaintance told me last week of his recent experience with an ayahuasca group. I'm glad this stuff is still goin' on.

[reggie the dog]

12. the last time i had acid was this summer

in Santa Cruz and the old hippies that dosed me refused money for it and then put an ounce of weed on the table and told me to roll myself a joint!

[Ishoutandscream2]

19. Beautiful.

I smoked grass this past weekend with a friend I hadn't seen in 30 years. It was such a great experience.

[Scuba]

13. I watched a documentary on acid...

...which is clearly the best way.


(sorry, no, it's not an original line)

[asdjrocky]

14. For the win.

Some of the best and most insightful moments of my life have been spent with psychedelics.

[JuniperLea]

16. Chamomile knocks me for a loop!

There are many other "legal" herbs that have a profound effect on me as well.

Alcohol feels poisonous to me, but in small amounts it's nice and warm and comforting.

The Weed grew in our biosphere and has been sampled by many peoples throughout the ages. I think that anyone who tried it with an open mind would see how benign it is in comparison to alcohol, which is available on nearly every street corner.

Humans are a weird lot.

[nashville_brook]

17. TM is one of my all-time favorite outlaw philosophers.

What a mind.

[B Calm]

18. LSD doesn't show up on employer drug tests!

[Honeycombe8]

20. I don't regard pot as a psychedelic. Nothing is on the table about legalizing psychedlics...

is there?

[fizzgig]

21. that's an experience i've not yet had

but i have no doubt that psychedelics hold great value

[AlbertCat]

22. Depends on the psychedelic!

Things in moderation, y'know.

But some, like Jimson Weed, will kill you....even just a little. And the hallucinations are so real, they can be dangerous.... for instance, like thinking you're indoors when you are really out doors....waking into or off things because you literally don't now where you are. Your body temp then goes up to very dangerous levels.
But then there's Salvia, which sends you on a 10 minute trip and then leaves the body completely. It's usually done in pairs so one person can be sober and prevent you from walking out a window or something. Apparently it makes you feel like you "become part of" things.... like the chair your sitting in. (haven't done either, but know people who have)

I once said on a board everyone should do opium at least once. It is amazing! I got instant "are you nuts" responses. But I wasn't' advocating doing heroine or repeated smoking of opium.

Even though I doubt one could get hooked on one try (I didn't), maybe there are some who would. And even when I did acid, I was always aware that "it was the drug", and not real. Not so for some I have seen freak and get in trouble with acid.

So it depends not only on the drug, and how it affects your body, it's also how it affects the mind and how different people deal with it. It depends on the person too.


But in a society with legal booze and tobacco, illegal pot is just absurd.

[Bluenorthwest]

25. Just for fun. Cary Grant:

"I took LSD with the hope it would make me feel better about myself. I wanted to rid myself of all my hypocrisies."
" For a slow learner, I learned a great deal — and the result of it all was rebirth. A new assessment of life and myself in it. An immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts, and a release of the tensions that had been the result of them."

[billyclem]

26. I remember psychedelics; but,

I haven't tried any for 30 years or so. Not since I found something better for me, a single seat and an open cockpit. It is amazing how clear and focused your mind can be at 10,000ft in a plane you built yourself. I do find myself thinking more often how much we could benefit from Terence McKenna now, we lost much when he died.