# Atheists/(current or former) who've Taken Psychedelics - What Happened? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 5, 2012, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-current-or-former-whove-taken-psychedelics-what-happened/614791 "2012-03-05T05:49:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Docta\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Docta\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Docta_G)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-current-or-former-whove-taken-psychedelics-what-happened/614791/41 "2012-03-08T01:08:11Z")
> [@Astroboy14](#): > > I saw Dog. Beat me to it. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Moris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moris/32/2846_2.png) [@Moris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moris)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-current-or-former-whove-taken-psychedelics-what-happened/614791/42 "2012-03-08T01:16:35Z")
Some people might have had religious/divine experience with Psychedelics, I had the opposite - a feeling that a very thought is fragmented into a stream of neuron pulses and that, deep inside, our brains are nothing more than sophisticated machines. Meh. Nothing new under the sun. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-current-or-former-whove-taken-psychedelics-what-happened/614791/43 "2012-03-08T16:13:29Z")
> [@Mixolydian](#): > > Not sure if this belongs in GD or not… > > Some extensive but interesting reading on the subject here: [LSD — The Problem-Solving Psychedelic - Chapter VI](http://www.psychedelic-library.org/staf6.htm) > > _“For most orthodox Christians, the wisdom of using a drug to elicit deep religious insight may seem blasphemous. There is perhaps some comfort in hearing that atheists under LSD frequently report meaningful religious experiences. (In one LSD group, for example, of which less than 10 per cent of its members were “believers,” terms such as God, the Divine, deep religious experience and a meeting with the infinite were used in over half the follow-up reports.)”_ > > Disclaimer: Note that many substances referred to herein and most likely in the followup discussion are illegal in the US, nor is any condoning of the consumption of illegal substances implied. Well, I have, on acid, had the kind of hallucinations which I imagine that a religious person _would_ interpret religiously, i.e. consider a “vision.” For example, I imagined travelling up and down the trunk of Yggdrasil, the Old Norse world tree, plus at one point I imagined that the snare drum in the song I was listenting to was actually being solemnly played on a faraway mountain by none other than the almighty All-Father Odin himself so as to call his chosen ones to him, and that I myself was storming forth towards him over the ice and the snow, so that the cymbal crashes became the crack of the whip as I drove my eight mighty wolf-hounds to drive my silver chariot faster, faster, faster towards The All-Wise Father Of The Gods, and so that the ravishing smattering of the double bass drums became the sound of my grim wolf-hounds’ war-like paws crushing the snow beneath them as they sped, sped, sped fearlessly forth arrow-like through the grim black metal frostbitten kingdoms of desolation and death and closer, closer, closer to my father the One-Eyed Majesty and Norse Heathen Lord Of The Hosts. _But here’s the crucial fucking bit, though_: As a non-religious person, I simply _did not_, at any time, interpret these “religious” hallucinations _religiously_, not even while they were actually happening. I took them then, and still take them today, to have been _hallucinations_, which might well reveal a thing or two about the brain and the mind and me and _my_ mind and the kind of guy I am all-around, but nothing whatsoever about the existance of god/gods/woo/whatever. (‘Twas one hell of a ride, though, I’ll give you that.) ---
**Author:** ![slowlearner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@slowlearner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slowlearner)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2012, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-current-or-former-whove-taken-psychedelics-what-happened/614791/44 "2012-03-09T03:26:30Z")
all that religious stuff about acid is silly, we used to talk, hey was that acid any good? yeah, i got all fucked up…it’s just a big party, you never read any studies or theories on why sex is so great on drugs or why you could float right out of your body laying in the grass at a grateful dead concert, it’s just intoxication, i always liked the description of descartes as a god intoxicated man ---
**Author:** ![Dogzilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@Dogzilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogzilla)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2012, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-current-or-former-whove-taken-psychedelics-what-happened/614791/45 "2012-03-09T16:54:04Z")
Once, I dropped acid with a boyfriend and we saw dragons in everything we looked at: in the pattern of the bricks we were walking on (looked like dragon scales), in the shape of a cloud floating by, in the outline of the tree line far off… We called that one the dragon trip, which I remember fondly. We did not go start The Cult of the Dragon Worshippers or anything. We didn’t even start attending their meetings. Another trip involved randomness. One friend had one of those hard rubber superballs. We were standing around in a parking lot, smoking cigarettes and drinking beers, waiting for the acid to take effect. He was bouncing the ball on the ground and catching it. Once in a while, the ball would hit a small rock or something and go jetting off in another direction. He would go after his ball and the rest of us – maybe 4 people – would sort of aimlessly follow him. We all went wherever the ball went and ended up spending the entire trip that way, following a bouncing ball all over town. We were letting the randomness of the universe guide us. There was no insight or spiritual epiphany from following a little bouncing ball around town; we were just tired from walking all night. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-current-or-former-whove-taken-psychedelics-what-happened/614791.md?page=2)