Hmm. As much as I tend towards Copernican principles that 'we are not special', I just don't know if I accept the idea that anybody is vulnerable to perpetrating violence when tripping, if the conditions are right.
I mentioned anti-anthropocentrism because if we are not special – as a species or as individual people – then it follows that nobody should be unique or special in comparison to everybody else by being 'immune to the possibility of doing violence whilst on psychedelics'. Anti-anthropocentrism derives its meaning in the traditional sense through astronomy: first that the Earth isn't the center of the universe, and follows the sun; next that the sun isn't actually unique either, being a member of the G-type main sequence stellar population; then that the Milky Way isn't unique either, being just one of billions of galaxies, many of which share its spiral morphology, such as the somewhat larger galaxy Andromeda in our Local Group; and ultimately even that our galaxy cluster is not any different from the rest of the filaments and clusters in the universe, that the universe is homogenous in composition, being a web formed from strings of galaxies, with clusters appearing where such filaments meet, with voids – bubbles of mostly empty space – separating the filaments. The anisotropic nature of the cosmic microwave background radiation is in some sense the ultimate proof that we inhabit a universe that looks pretty much the same in any direction we care to point our instruments.
Philosophically, while the anti-anthropocentric concept was originally devised in relation to our position as a species in the cosmos, it can also be applied to individuals or populations of individuals amongst the sum total of the Earth's population. This says basically that there's not really any difference between any two given people as far as superiority or inferiority, just differences in education, socioeconomic status, and so forth. This isn't to say that nurture trumps nature as far as determining who we are as people, and in fact it doesn't really have much to do with that dichotomy. It doesn't really say anything specific about a given person either – that's the point! We feel as though the world revolves around ourselves to one degree or another, but this is a perceptual fallacy, simply a product of the nature of our consciousness, not a reflection of any inherent 'special-ness' etc. of a given person.
This would lead then to the concept that if one person – or more appropriately many people – is capable of freaking out violently on psychedelic drugs, chances are that this latent property exists in everybody, it is just a question of probability whether it will manifest or not. The probability of this happening then would be affected by factors such as whether or not somebody has a history of mental illness, or even devoid of such a history whether they have any underlying mental issues that could pop up as a result of taking a trip. This probability would also be affected by whether or not the person has a strong mental sense of self, whether they are skilled at controlling and manipulating altered states, especially psychedelic states. It would also be affected by set and setting.
So if I'm going to be consistent with the anti-anthropic principles I hold, then I'd have to admit this is a possibility for anybody who is tripping, subject to forcing factors that determine the probability of freaking out. But at the same time it just goes against everything that I feel that I know about myself. I know myself very well, and I don't lie to myself, that's counterproductive as all hell. I know I possess the potential for violence, say if my family were threatened, but I don't think that I would freak out this way, being violent and going crazy.
I've felt the sort of impulses before on psychedelics that lead to Very Bad Things. Not violent impulses mind you, not at all, vey much the other side of the fight or flight response. I stepped in dog shit once on an assload of mushrooms when I was probably about 16, me and my buddy were in my backyard peaking bags of ballsacks and my parents were inside, and I remember crystal clear looking over my gate into the gangway thinking 'all I have to do is hop this gate, and run, never stop running, run and this will all be okay'. That's the sort of thing that leads to nonviolent freakouts, hiding in the bushes and shit. But I applied every piece of effort available to me, and fought the impulse to run to a standstill, and then killed it, because as far gone as I was I still knew that things could easily get out of hand if I gave even an inch of ground to the Fear.
Likewise, I have never been 'too fucked up', to the point where I would doubt my ability to handle the situation if some really bad shit went down, like somebody got hit by a car, or somebody else freaked the fuck out and went nuts, except on hard liquor. And thus I don't drink hard liquid, ever, period. I don't feel safe getting high on drugs unless I am fully assured of my capability to respond properly if some nastiness does go down, and so I control my dosages and choose not to use the one drug that adversely affects that capability. Even as a total, massive junkie, I have never been too fucked up. This was tested a grand total of seven fucking horrible, nightmarish times, when people have ODed and I have had to save their lives with narcan. Let me tell you, nothing sends you from totally blissed out hedonism to dead sober and deadly serious like somebody ODing and their life being literally in your hands, full stop.
So it's not just that I don't think that I'm capable of violent freakouts on psychedelics; I use the power of self-regulation to ensure that even if I am capable unknowingly of such a freakout, the situation or conditions that could bring about the release of those demons will never arise in the first place.
I guess the best way to reconcile the anti-anthropic principles I hold with my ironclad (but very much subjective) assurance that I would not ever freak out like this is to say that everybody possess the *possibility* of such an episode, but that the probability of the episode taking place wildly varies from person to person. I think that my mind and self-control is so strong that the probability of dreaming out violently is very, *very* low as it is, but it goes further, because what responsible drug use is all about is knowing that you must manipulate the preconditions and situations you will be in in the near future so as to *prevent* the conditions that might cause you to freak out – however unlikely that response may be – through a number of methods. This includes using drugs only if you know their provenance, know what compound it is, have the proper equipment to dose safely, arrange set and setting advantageously, and on and on.
Ultimately, you could sum it up as 'reduce your potential for harm', whatever that harm may be / regardless of the form that harm may take.
EDIT: I should also mention that minimizing the harm, no matter what form it takes, this applies also not only to ensuring that *you* don't freak out, but also that *others* don't freak out.
I recall this time in that same period of incredibly frequent mushroom use as the dog shit thing that a bunch of people that I was friends with came over to trip. One girl brought some dude that was her buddy I guess, but he was a known schizophrenic. I specifically told her 'do NOT give this kid psychedelic drugs', but she did secretly anyway, and we could tell he was starting to act odd, so I pried loose the information that she had in fact dosed him.
I had to take responsibility not just for myself, and not just for the property in the house I shared with my mother, but most importantly of all – more importantly even than my own safety – I had to ensure that everybody else there was safe. So I had to tell her to take her buddy and basically GTFO, take him somewhere where he can be watched, where he'll be safe. I gave them money for a cab, but she didn't want to leave.
Now, I'm not a confrontational person in real life (here in PD it may be another story
). I hate drama, I don't like ordering people around, why can't we all get along, right? And I felt awful about it, mostly for the schizophrenic kid, since this would likely be an unpleasant thing to have to leave and get into a cab if confused and on drugs while mentally ill. The girl I didn't mind so much being strict with, she broke the house rules, she endangered us all. So I took her aside and threatened to call the cops, and *made* her leave.
Sure enough, dude was fine for several hours, but about two hours after he and the girl got to his parents house he went from perfectly fine and tripping happily to going nuts, trying to cut himself with a broken bottle, then did cut himself with it, non-verbally threatened to stab his parents and the girl, jumped into a plate glass window that didn't break and nearly broke his nose, and bad shit involving the cops and the hospital did ensue.
Moral of the story is that if you're gonna be tripping with people, your responsibility extends not only to ensuring that you don't freak out – that you're not a danger to them – but also to ensuring nobody *else* is a danger to them. I said I won't ride the OP for the stupid choice of taking an unknown dose of an unknown drug branded as 'Devil acid', so I'll not expound on it, but in doing these irresponsible things he put not only himself at risk but his buddies – including obviously the one who freaked out – at risk too.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
