I tried shrooms twice. I didn’t have any kind of spiritual experience on them. It was more like laughing my ass off for five hours straight.
If your consciousness is equivalent to IPU, then perhaps. Remember, I can’t observe any of that either. Ever.
But who’s measuring these insights to pass judgements on magnitude?
SiXSwordS, I don’t understand that last post. All I’m disputing is your assertion on whether a spiritual experience can be said to be a shortcut or not.
Really? Have you ever looked into the vaults of Erowid? Plenty of bhang wallas there at no loss for words, tons of personal narratives.
I can only speak for myself. A lasting value I got out of entheogens was a deep-seated sense that everything in my existence was basically all right and everything was going to be all right, not to fret. Considering the ills to personality, relationships, and society that derive from insecurity and anxiety, my discovery of lasting inner peace and security has proved an extraordinarily valuable boon in getting through my life. In retrospect, the Buddhist values of clarity and compassion have been coming through more easily, more consistently as a result of my insights gained during entheogenic experiences, going back about 30 years.
Since you asked.
Um… says who?
Fair enough.
No, it’s more like a color-blind person asking a color-seeing person to explain the difference. “Dude, the rose is just red, I’m sorry I can’t find a shade of gray that makes it meaningful to you”.
If you demand an externally measurable change, consider ibogaine. A number of scientific studies have demonstrated that it has significant potential to end opiate addiction… in some cases, within hours. gobs of studies
I dare say, my experiences have been a bit more recent, although they span a long period of time. I’ve seen LSD in purple pyramids ( a gel-like sheet of pyramidal squares) and classic blotter. I’ve heard of people claim to have possessed liquid forms ol LSD, perhaps apocryphally. My contacts were not at the wholesale level, plus I find the concept to be rather scary, with the Urban Legend of the child eating the sugar cube in the fridge coming to mind. I mean LSD is a clear odoress substance (I think), so I’d hate to get that bottle mixed up with a bottle of Dasani. I actually think I’ve seen this happen in a movie one time.
I like to cook, and I’ve never seen any store bought edible mushrooms that resembled psylosybin mushrooms when dried. Psylocybin mushrooms have a distinct bluish tinge to them and usually very long stems and smaller caps. Psychedelic mushrooms grow wild on cow turds in the Pacific Northwest, although I’ve never seen them. I’ve seen fresh growing mushrooms in Amsterdam and Copenhagen and they definitely correlate to the dried version. Granted, there are many species that take on different form factors, but I’ve never seen any evidence that people are selling store bought mushrooms spiked with LSD. I’d just assume that they were trying to pass off dried button mushrooms or shitakes for the real thing. You know, the old oregano trick.
Psychedelic mushrooms can be grown with a little determination. If you’re capable of canning tomatoes without killing yourself from botulism, you can probably grow mushrooms, given the proper spore print. Have you actually seen these “spiked” versions of store bought 'shrooms in real life? I suspect that such a product may have existed, but I’m damn sure that the vast majority of product out there is “organic”.
I should clarify. I’m a hard core atheist. However, I can see how a person may experience something akin to a religious epiphany while under the inflluence of hallucinogens.
Ooh, the colors, man! 
Well, that depends on whether or not you consider religion + drugs to be an improvement over drugs alone; I don’t. For that matter, I don’t consider religion alone better than drugs.
I stopped being a pilot because of my first experience with mushrooms. The experience began as pool’s with excessive laughing, but then it turned into a deep introspective period of “Who am I and wtf am I doing with my life?” I realized that I was going to flight school for the wrong reasons and that I didn’t actually want to be a pilot. The reasons were subtle, but they were real. I honestly believe that the mushrooms sped up my realization, and quite possibly saved myself years of anguish and, owing to the fact that pilots are generally in charge of the fates of the passengers and crew, someone’s life. But during that trip I also realized that I couldn’t wimp out, that if I just quit and walked away I would be taking the easy way out. And that is about the time I started to come back to reality. The next few days were spent analyzing what happened - which is the beauty of mushrooms, you don’t forget anything like with alcohol. In the process of analyzing what my emotions and thoughts were of that experience, I made a plan to finish my training, thus proving I could ‘do it’, and then move on to something else. I did my Certified Flight Instructor’s test with the FAA guy in a massive wind storm, stuck the landing in a huge crosswind and had him say “Congratulations, you’re a CFI.” That was the last time I flew a plane.
So my experience gave me two things- first, that my current course of action was wrong for my life, second, that that didn’t matter nearly as much as the importance of finishing something I had begun. Not bad for an 8 hour therapy session.
-Tcat
This might fool a neophyte, but no store-bought mushroom I’ve ever tried came anywhere close to the utterly horrible flavor of Psilocybe mushrooms, which have the savory tang of a cow’s ass (or as I would imagine one would taste, were I bold enough to try) and were, in my experience, impossible to eat without grimacing. I hope your local grocery is not selling mushrooms that rank.
I think a much greater danger with mushrooms, if they are collected wild and not home-grown, is that you may end up consuming a lookalike species—some of which can be deadly poisonous—and may find yourself “meeting god”* in a literal sense.
*Or not.
excuse my excessive editing of your post Tomcat
This may seem like a terrible place to ask this question, and I don’t mean to single you Tomcat, but does any of this, including a success story, mean that the drug or drugs like it should be leglized?
I can see an argument on the other side of the issue claiming that there is a real danger of people ruining their lives. There are strict regulations regarding the practice of psychology and psychiatry. Is the fact that a drug that induces a state of deep personal assessment an argument for or against legalization?
I’m well aware of your views on religion, and I actually agree with you on many of them even if I don’t draw all of the same conclusions. But if you posit that (for example) an alcoholic, who is destroying his health, career, marriage, and children’s development is not qualitatively better off for having given up the alcohol because of religion (or “religion + drugs” in the Brazilian church example)—regardless of what you or I think about the “truth” of religious belief—I must disagree with you. I think that only your extreme hatred of religion blinds you to the illogic of that viewpoint.
You’ve got an interesting historic parallel in how the 1980’s cult leader Bhagwan Rajneesh used MDMA as the main attraction of his cult. His cult in Poona, India, attracted a great deal of western followers who raved about the spiritual experiences they had there. Apparently much of that experience was due to them having been slipped MDMA (Ecstasy) in their drinks.
So he goes from ruining a few peoples lives to ruining many people’s lives. My view isn’t illogical; I’m simply looking at the social perspective rather than the personal. I regard religion as an immensely destructive force, and supporting religion is a contribution to that destructiveness. If that makes you, personally better off, I don’t care; plenty of selfish, destructive behaviors make people better off at the cost of everyone else.
The destructiveness of alcoholism is obvious; I have a harder time understanding in what way a group of people gathering to pray to a God who may or may not exist, or to take ayuhuasca, is harmful to them or anyone else, let alone “ruins many lives.”
I am not a religious person. I am (despite my parents’ best intentions) an agnostic. Neither am I a fan of sports; I would be just as happy if all sports disappeared from the planet. But I don’t see anything “destructive” in people who do like sports gathering in a stadium to watch a football game, provided I am not required to attend.
No you’re not. You’re making a ludicrously broad generalization of the entire religious experience, based on your own personal biases, exemplifying the same bucket-headed bigotry and ideological zealotry as some of the people you oppose.
Vinyl Turnip said:
I can. I ate some mushrooms a couple of times (In Hawaii, many years ago) and what happened was that I reached a state where I was completely “out of body” as they say; couldn’t feel anything physical around me, couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed, couldn’t distinguish the music I was “hearing” came from the wind and waves and birdsongs- had no connection at all with the “real world”. And yet I was fully conscious, knew who I was and why I was feeling that way, in fact was wider “awake” than I had every been (or have ever been since). What I was left with when the experience faded was a very strong sense that consciousness/self didn’t necessarily need a physical body to exist, and that therefore death was nothing to fear. (I didn’t find God, although at the time I was still looking pretty hard). Since then I’ve gone through a few experiences when I knew, for sure, that I was going to die in a few minutes or hours, (As you may notice, I was mistaken) and the knowledge, if I may call it that, that I retained from the mushroom trips was very, very helpful in keeping me from panicking- which was why I didn’t, in fact, die- and in accepting what seemed to be inevitable.
And now, forty years later, I’m going to do it again. (mushrooms are legal in Oaxaca, at least among the Mazatec Indians, several of whom are friends of mine) . What has happened is that the doctors told me that I should put my affairs in order, because ninety percent of the people who have what I have are gone in six months. That was twentynine months and some days ago, so as you may notice again, they were mistaken, but why I’m still around is something of a mystery. I’m still not afraid for myself, but now I’ve got a family and I am desperately worried about how they’re going to take it when, as it must someday, the thing with the black hood and scythe comes calling. One of my Mazatec friends is a chief of his town, and knows who all the real curanderos are, and he has promised to introduce me as not-a-hippy-looking-for-kicks (they get a lot of those, and they don’t appreciate them much) and explain my reasons for wanting to be guided through a proper experience……I’m sure there’s a better word than that, but I can’t think of it just now. I have to get down to the Tuxtepec area and then up into the Sierra Mazateca, and I’ve got a lot of work to finish before I do, so I don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen. Also I’m just a bit scared about what I’m going to see when I look into whatever is awaiting me (“just a bit” is me telling myself that I’m not actually terrified) so I’ve been putting the whole thing off for a while now, but one of these days I’m gonna take the plunge. Who knows, maybe I will meet some god or other , maybe a Mazatec one. I would be disillusioned if it turned out to be Cthulu.
A dark, dark day. :mad:
Well, I would say that a majority of people are actually quite sane and logical, but we all go through periods where we are questioning ourselves, our lives, our goals, etc. In my case, the mushrooms acted as a catalyst for “To thine own self be true.” I had started down a path that turned out wrong for me, for various reasons, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to rectify the situation. The mushrooms helped me in a very personal way…possibly one that wouldn’t even have come about if I had gone to see a therapist.
So, yes, I believe that for a majority of the population they would be able to use mushrooms without adverse reactions, as their basic character and sanity would direct the experience to a more positive one than, say, “let’s go crazy and hurt someone/myself!”
But then there would be that small proportion of society that might go flippo on the experience. Just like that small proportion of people that should never ever get drunk because they get mean, belligerant, aggressive and want to drive cars. We should not go around acting like nannies to protect every last individual from the big bad world. Drugs make you feel and think differently, M’kay? As an adult you need to be responsible for your own actions and safety. If you do not, and you present yourself as a threat to yourself or others, then we as a society can then step in and stop you.
The thing about legalizing drugs is that if you decriminalize the usage, you are not decriminalizing any potential action/reactions. i.e. Smoking pot can be made legal, but smoking pot under the age of 18/21 can still be illegal. Eating mushrooms can be legal, but trespassing on some farmers land to commune with the cattle is still illegal. Just as we don’t accept the defense “I was drunk, yer Honor” for assault, nor would we have to accept any other forms of crimes done while intoxicated by any substance.
So yes, I say legalize drugs. Control the quality and make them ‘safer’ (much like we make sure that alcohol doesn’t blind us). Tax them as much as we tax other substances and use that money for reality-based education and rehabilitation. In a society that accepts the most dangerous substance on the planet (IMHO alcohol) as a normal everyday thing that responsible people can use responsibly, then there is little logic ‘protecting’ the masses from other substances that are less ‘dangerous’.
-Tcat