Ask the atheist psychologist who did ayuahasca yesterday.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Other then this 2014 threadasking if Dopers had any experience with the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, also called yagé, I could not find any other threads, so I’ll open this one.

I did an ayuahasca ceremony two days ago, in the Netherlands, with this organization, and had a genuine mystical experience. Yup. I saw God. Wept tears of joy and awe. Came back from it with a sense of a larger purpose, and comfort, too. I hope and trust that it is a life changing experience. This 2006 John Hopkins study researched volunteers with a similar experience to mine and found that two months later, they reported positive changes in attitudes and behavior. And what is more, the people around them agreed !

I put this in Great Debates; there might be some witnessing involved in me writing about my experience, although I’ll try to keep that to a minimum. I know how annoying it is to hear such a thing described it you have not experienced it.
My background as a psychologist might also help to describe some aspects of the experience.

As for the legal aspects of this drug, and if it is allowed to discuss it here on the SDMB: the legality of ayahuasca in the USA is not quite clear, but the consensus seems to be that (religious) ceremonies are allowed, while selling the main active ingredient (DMT) in pill form is illegal. A quick google search on ayuahasca ceremonies USAyields some organizations that offer ceremonies in the USA.

I’ll write more in the posts below. For me it is an opportunity to document the experience and come back to it later and see if I look differently at it.

I’ll open with the most obvious question: The puking you keep hearing about! How about the throwing up?

Yes, most people puked once or twice during the over-8-hour ceremony. Each floorbed had a neat little personal bucket beside it, lined with a plastic bag. Boxes of tissues for crying, too.
And while beforehand throwing up in public seems like an hugely embarrassing and unpleasant deal, once you’re in the ceremony it really, really does not matter.
Even puking can be a sacrament, strange but true. Mostly because it can feel like a symbolic purge. Also it allows the tripsitters to help you, which they do so kindly that accepting their help and presence also gets symbolic for something :slight_smile: .

I did not puke, but I would not mind if I had. The puking of the people right next to me did not bother me at all.

Ask away !

2

Are you still an atheist?

3

Sort of… No. :slight_smile: I certainly know now what religious people are talking about. I did not before.

4

Doesn’t it seem rather more likely that whatever you experienced was as a consequence of imagining shit while your brain was malfunctioning due to you being stoned out of your gourd, rather than as a consequence of contacting some sort of deity?

5

What things did you see/hear? How were your thoughts and feelings different from usual?

How did you think and feel the next day?

When you say that you saw God, what do you mean?

Had you taken psychedelics before? If so, which ones in which quantities and to what effect?

6

Do you have any knowledge for why god would reveal itself on demand to people who ingest hallucinogens?

7

So was Bill Hicks right ? Is all matter pure energy condensed to a slow vibration, we’re all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves ?

Mind you, I haven’t the first clue what the fuck he was talking about. But was he right, though ? :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
Do you have any knowledge for why god would reveal itself on demand to people who ingest hallucinogens?
[/QUOTE]

To be fair to the putative god, they did leave a lot of the stuff lying around all over the place.

8

In service of what?

9

Puking AND weeping?

Sounds like fun indeed!

10

I’ve always wanted to talk to an atheist psychologist who did ayuahasca!

My question is similar to Princhester’s but from a totally different perspective. I’ve never tried ayuahasca but I’ve had my own long term change inducing experiences with hallucinogenics.

For me, there’s never been an iota of empirical objectivity to my experience. I’ve never forgotten that some plant based alkaloid caused my brain to function abnormally for a while. That fact hasn’t kept me from maintaining a years-long lasting sense of spirituality that I never expected to feel, as a former atheist. I feel a sense of connectedness with the universe and with humanity that I didn’t before and that has made my life more meaningful and enjoyable than it was previously.

I suppose it might have been even more meaningful if god appeared on some idle Tuesday afternoon, without the aid of drugs. But that might be very distressing as I would have thought I’d gone insane.

In short, I’m not expecting to prove my experience correct at any point (e.g. upon death). My worst case scenario seems to be that a plant tricked me into feeling a deeper sense of meaningfulness in my life, and I’m frankly ok with that. I’ve always been really curious what a psychologists’s take on it would be.

11

I sought out such experiences, mostly with LSD and psilocybin mushrooms and mescaline, starting when I was 18. Is yage your first and only chemical-provoked tripping experience? Welcome aboard!

To Maastricht— did you / do you find yourself wondering that a bit yourself, and if so does it feel like there is “content” that you can assess over time while not under the influence?

12

Well, duh, that was exactly what happened *). But it did not feel like it, and that is the point.

Compare it with an experience you might be familiar with, falling in love. Being infatuated is actually your brain malfunctioning and imagining shit, and feeling pressed to act in a way, due to your genes, hormones and societal expectations. But it does not feel like that, does it?

*) although, if you look at the usually **) positive outcomes of spiritual/mystic experiences, and the usually positive outcomes of being in love, I would describe the brain here as "functioning differently"r ather then malfunctioning.

**) I said usually, I know bad outcomes also happen and that the public is more likely to hear about those, because: “and then afterward everything went rather well” is not much of a story.

13

Now I imagine God’s office in the sky, golden CEO of Heaven and Earth Inc.- plate on His door, and an angel secretary knocking respectfully and saying: “Sorry, Boss, but we have another tripper on earth demanding Your Presence”. And God saying angrily: “Again ?! I don’t have time for this !”".

But, it was not like that. Taking an entheogen ( term for psychoactive substances that invite a mystic or spiritual or religious experience) was just a tool to open my mind to such an experience.
When you think about it, it is not that much different when people invite a mystic or religious/ spiritual experience by other tools humanity has available. Meditating or prayer. Prepping yourself mentally, so your mind will be more likely to go the way you want it to go. Fasting. Exhausting yourself. Or just the opposite of exhaustion, taking time to be really well rested and clearing your head of everyday worries. Repetitive movement, like rosary bead prayer or those guys dancing in white circular skirts.
Singing and chanting, music.
An impressive location, like a beautiful building or a beautiful outdoors spot.
Seeking company of like minded people so that the social instinct to do as others, and emotional contagion can work for you. Or, again, the opposite, like seeking solitude in the desert for a hermit, sensory deprivation for a nun in a silent order…
All these tools and more are well known and widely used.

Even an ordinary Christian church service has some elements of this. Believers come together with like-minded people, there is an expectation of what will happen, there are rituals ordained by a respected leader. In prayer there is inner focus, there is music, solemn words, all that can help with a feeling of “yeah, I was part of something greater and better then just myself just now, and that feels good”.

Psychedelics are just another tool, and while they are stronger then most other tools, even they are not guaranteed to work.

14

Curiosity? Entertainment? Same as with other IMHO threads ? (Mods, if IMHO is a better place for this thread, feel free to move it).

15

Sounds like my Thermodynamics class. Particularly around testing time.

16

Yes, isn’t it strange? :slight_smile:

Although I would not describe my experience as “fun”. Beautiful and awe inspiring, yes. In some way liberating, too. Fun, no.

Some others in my group had fun, though. They had huge smiles on their faces before and afterwards.

Again others described as “years of psychotherapy compacted in an 8 hour session”. Fun? Not really, but hugely rewarding nonetheless.

Again others had a few mildly interesting kaledoscopic experiences, or a mild high while listening to music. Or they did not feel much at all, besides disappointment. For them any puking was certainly not worth it.

17

Are atheists more likely to convert if they take this drug in a foxhole?

Anyway, it doesn’t sound as bad as getting religion by taking Datura.

“Among the Chumash, when a boy was 8 years old, his mother gave him a preparation of momoy to drink. This was supposed to be a spiritual challenge to the boy to help him develop the spiritual wellbeing required to become a man. Not all of the boys survived.”

18

Sorry. I wasn’t clear.

Why did you decide to experiment with this particular hallucinogen, knowing the likely outcome? i.e. experiencing things you (presumably) know to be illusions to an otherwise rational mind.

19

Are you familiar with the term ego death? Did you experience something like that? Do you feel like you’ve gained a new perspective on how you interact with other people? Do you have a new perspective on nature or the environment?

What do you mean by seeing God, exactly? Was is a visual experience, like seeing a person? Did he talk to you? Or was it more like experiencing a powerful presence?

20

Another atheist with a mystical bent here.

Mysticism is, in my view, a matter of intuitive knowledge, rather than rational thought; you “know” that you are part of a larger reality in the same way (to make a crude analogy) you “know” which side of your body is left and which is right, of why the color green is different from the color red (both things that are obvious to most, but not to some).

It’s the same sense as what you sense as “you” being located somehow behind your eyes, and not (say) in your fingernails; you realize at one and the same time that you are just an animal, born to scrape a living, possibly reproduce, and die in an eyeblink of time, and that you are part of an eternal, wonderful process of growth and change - as if you were an organ the universe has specifically grown to perceive itself in all its glory.

I have no problem with the notion that this “intuitive knowledge” experience is simply a function of one’s brain circuitry firing one way, and not another. Nor do I think that this means a “god” literally exists, in the form imagined by mythology. “God” is just the handy culturally-derived label people put on a reality that is notoriously impossible to label, for this sense of all-encompassing, all-good other. Which really isn’t an “other” at all.