Psychedelic drugs

[Corpsey]

On recommendation from a forum member (can't remember who, sorry) I've started reading Michael Pollan's book on psychedelics:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/b...9781594204227/

Here's the article he wrote for the New Yorker about using psilocybin to help terminally ill people prepare for death:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...trip-treatment

I'm only up to chapter 2 so can't comment on the book as a whole yet, but this is an area I'm very interested in, perhaps because I'd like a sort of silver bullet for my brain.

But also takes us into the area of the mystical, potentially in a way that's compatible with science.

Also relevant here is Oliver Sacks, who experimented with all sorts of drugs as a young doctor.

https://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sac...bout_our_minds

[Corpsey]

Has anyone on here had a life-changing psychedelic experience?

[droid]

Has anyone on here had a life-changing psychedelic experience?

Too many to mention perhaps.

[droid]

Sorry to hear that. Thomas Ligotti took acid in the early 70s and (apparently) became ahedonistic as a result - some irony there as psychedelics are probably the only shortcut to ego-death - something he vigorously advocates.

[Corpsey]

Sorry to hear that version. I've had a few friends have bad experiences with psychedelics and with drugs in general.

I've done mushrooms a handful of times and acid once and enjoyed myself (apart from the odd wobble) every time. But never took sufficient dose of either to have the full ego death experience, which quite frankly sounds terrifying but is also - according to the book - the required level to experience in order to 'enjoy' a mystical experience.

Still, I'm wary of doing them because I worry I'll go insane, or just that I'll be stuck having an awful time for eight hours. Although I'd probably do mushrooms on a fairly regular basis if they were easily found.

[Corpsey]

One of the heaviest trips I've ever had was induced by snorting ketamine at a festival. It was very full on, and I felt reality completely flatten out at one point - everything was "unreal", including me of course. I think if I'd had that experience when I was younger it would have really fucked me over but by this age I've experienced enough to be able to tell myself it will pass... Anyway, the most interesting thing about the experience was coming down and waking up in the morning with a sense of gratitude for sanity. Knowing my name, knowing how a lighter works etc.

[Corpsey]

The thing I have most enjoyed about mushrooms is the feeling of the frontal brain relaxing, the critical inner voice being somehow tamed, apparently able to think clearly at last - a sense of calm that one might not expect.

[thirdform]

cocaine is the best capitalist drug tbh. even better than speed. speed is just productivity. gak makes u a cunt.

[droid]

A lot of my friends also have or had similar issues to me from doing the same stuff. I went through a period of doing a lot of acid in my teens for a couple of years along with 'shrooms, ket, mdma, weed and basically anything else I could get my hands on and eventually went on a really, really rough trip and have been struggling to get back to "normal" ever since. It was basically just a case of overindulging at a young age and I really regret it despite having a lot of fun.

Its risky business alright. My psychedelic years were between the ages of 15-20. I look back in amazement sometimes that no serious damage was done, physical or mental.

[droid]

Yeah, I just wish I'd been a bit more sensible with it. It was also around the time that more and more people started finding really unpleasant stuff online which, thankfully, I avoided for the most part as one of the few times I ended up taking any of it I had an absolute nightmare with that DXM stuff they sometimes put in cough medicine in the US. I got lost on the edge of the countryside on my own, at night and with no credit on my phone feeling somewhere between a speed comedown and a k-hole whilst having such intense itching all over my body and nausea that I just ended up lying on the ground and scratching my arms raw until some mates from the party I'd got lost on the way to happened to find me on the side of the road.

I think I was blessed in some ways cos back in my day it was acid, mushrooms, speed and very rarely, E's & coke. You either got a dud or it worked, there were no research chemicals and all of those drugs have proven the test of time and their hazards are well known.

I think kids today face a much more dangerous landscape. I accidentally consumed some nBome a few years back, and I can hands down say it was the most unpleasant & psychologically dangerous drug related experience Ive ever had. Much worse than even some of the ill advised LSD megadoses I indulged in back in the day. 2 weeks later in Cork someone was found wandering the streets covered in blood after slashing themselves with two bodies inside the house dead from toxic shock after taking the same stuff.

LSD can't kill you, even if you take a hundred tabs (though you might lose your mind), nBome's have super high toxicity, so even 1 or 2 extra tabs could do you in.

[Matthew]

but this is an area I'm very interested in, perhaps because I'd like a sort of silver bullet for my brain.

as i understand it at least, depth psychoanalysis will get you there.

people say it can be expensive (though there are subsidised ways of doing it) and it would also require quite a lot of painful and tiring work...

BUT the advantage is that it will (like psychedelics) frequently have a spiritual outcome AND (unlike psychedelics) people actually understand where they have ended up.

with psychedelics you zap to the other end of the experience with no understanding of how it connects to your everyday existence. then it wears off and you're left trying to reconcile the alpha with the omega.

[Corpsey]

I do think there's value to psychoanalysis, but the sort of experiences Pollan is describing don't square up with this:

'BUT the advantage is that it will (like psychedelics) frequently have a spiritual outcome AND (unlike psychedelics) people actually understand where they have ended up.

with psychedelics you zap to the other end of the experience with no understanding of how it connects to your everyday existence. then it wears off and you're left trying to reconcile the alpha with the omega.'

Perhaps because they're not 'typical' psychedelic experiences - they're produced under guided conditions. Pollan talks about this, about how the spiritual bent of the scientists performing these experiments inevitably infects the subjects experiences.

OTOH you may be right to say that psychedelics doesn't give people an 'understanding' (but then, isn't the 'understanding' arrived at by psychoanalysis also something imaginatively created and subject to shadowy forces?) - Pollan writes that these experiences conform to William James's definition of mystical experiences:

http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/mys...ne/james.shtml

Key parts of this being a conviction of absolute truth and understanding and a complete inability to explain this in words:

1. Ineffability - The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.

2. Noetic Quality - Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discurssive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime.

[Corpsey]

What I meant to say re: your quote was that the very attempt to reconcile alpha and omega necessitates a perspective shift - that there is more to life than you thought, and can see

[Corpsey]

Also, I should have named this thread differently, as I'd like to discuss how drugs can play a positive role in our lives, and the recent emerging science around this, e.g. ketamine being used to treat depression.

[Matthew]

2. Noetic Quality

that's what i'm trying to suggest.

it's one of the underacknowledged aspects of psychoanalysis. some of the most convincing discourses around psychedelics frame them as (essentially) vastly accelerated psychoanalysis. the key is probably is putting dreams into the mix and accounting for them.

worth remembering psychoanalysis's roots in shamanism, mesmerism and (key with freud) the kabbalah. etc etc etc. basically murky, but highly effective techniques...

i suppose it worries me a little whenever i read about a pill being the answer.

[i'm going to be offline travelling for a week or so - so apologies i can't get back to you here immediately]