Psychedelic scepticism

[swilow]

Over the years, I've gone from a cliche peace-love-"hippie", you know the power of crystals and aura healing. I drifted towards the occult, Thelema, ZKC, all the while dosing on multiple psychedelics and dissociatives. I used to wonder why these healing drugs were illegal. "But they put us in touch with our inner selves, they will save the world by spreading peace and love amongst all, they are revealing the secrets of the universe to me!".

I've come to see that the psychedelic sub-culture is what's making these things illegal. Psychedelics have utilititarian value. For example, cluster headaches and psilocybin. PTSD and other pathologies with MDMA or 2C-B. Addiction interruption with ibogaine or (I'll call it this in honour) yage. I believe that LSD/psilocybin did initially also have some positive effects on things like alcoholism and various neuroses. Ketamine and dissociatives are linked to relief of depression and various somatic illnesses. Cannabis has untold medical value. All of these benefits have been subsumed by the dominant new agers.

Then emerged people like Timothy Leary, Ram Daas and the like who started linking psychedelics to religion (the Old Way imo) and political revolution. We have Terence McKenna (I'm a huge fan, he is eloquent in his delivery of utter nonsense) encountering machine elves, binding harmine to his brothers DNA, urging users to take high doses in the dark. We have John Lily, riding his bicycle, talking to dolphins and receiving information from some entity organising coincidences on earth. Rick Strassman postulating DMT playing a role in reincarnation and external entity contact (set and setting brother).

In my opinion, these guys did a grave injustice to the utilitarian value of these substances. I don't really think that even one of the above claims has been demonstrated. The thereaputic benefits have been- so why are these things still on the fringe? Is it the community keeping them that way?

Please note that I am not dismissing the spiritual aspect of these drugs. But, I think that for humans, life IS spiritual anyway without drugs. Conflating psychedelics with religion, social revolution and unverifiable, unscientific dogma means that the mainstream will continue to reject these substances which I think we can conclude do have real, functional benefit.

I sincerely do not wish to insult anyone who believes in anything. I think new age beliefs are mainly bullshit, but I am all for people believing in whatever they want. But I do think that this sort of ideology has done an injustice to those who could have benefited from the therapeutic effects of these drugs. If we really think psychedelics are valuable, why do we devalue them with nonsense/woo? I believe the psychedelic scene is at least partially responsible for this continuing prohibition. Like it or not, society doesn't have much of a place for crystal healing, machine elves and aura cleansing because these things don't exist, they are not demonstrably true and should be rejected by those who think. I wish to debunk the unfounded and insubstantial allegations made about psychedelics so they can be used beneficailly by more than just just an alternative fringe.

I value peace and love, I don't value nonsense. I love you people because we are all suffering together I want us to suffer less.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

Dang you're really on today huh swilow? %)

What exactly are you getting at though? I agree though, that new-age pseudo-philosophical/spiritual stuff is often BS and has little place in the evolution of psychedelics as true medicines (though can be quite fun in its own right). Reminds me of this guy:

 

[swilow]

I would have thought my 15 dissociated paragraphs was more than enough. :D I'm just emerging from depression mainly because ive accepted my suicidal thoughts and am at peace with its inevitability.

I apologize if its upsetting I understand it may piss people off. I do love you all and love interacting with this community. I want us to grow beyond the tropes of the 60s. I just think we might get somewhere with DMT if we can move past the elves. DMT gave me so much in terms of mental health but how can this benefit be spread if the association with unfounded gibberish is so much more dominant?

If anyone ever read back several years of my posting, you'll see me ranting about love, peace and exreme intoxication. My recent trips are atheistic, I am the god, the elf, the spiral wheel, the ghb infused sick mother fucker trying to find reasons to keep living.

I want to reclaim psychedelics from the nonsense. I want us to debunk the stupid myths that are proliferating in this scene which undermine the utilitarian value of these drugs. I think its keeping them illegal, amongst other things.

Also, lets determine whether they in fact have such value.

Yeah, you're right, I'm on.

 

[mr peabody]

Boy, I like this post for so many reasons, I don't know where to begin. It's wonderful, and I thank you for that.

In 1968 psychedelics were my WHOLE LIFE and they are still the #1 most important thing IN THE WORLD to me. I was just a kid when I saw Leary dance out on stage at a Moody Blues concert in a white robe, playing tambourine to them singing "Timothy Leary's dead." It was exciting then, but I concur completely - all the new age nonsense hasn't helped things one bit. I recently ran across this comment by Albert Hofmann:

"I was visited by Timothy Leary when he was living in Switzerland many years ago. He was a very intelligent man, and quite charming. I enjoyed our conversations very much. However, he also had a need for too much attention. He enjoyed being provocative, and that shifted the focus from what should have been the essential issue. It is unfortunate, but for many years these drugs became taboo. Hopefully, these same problems from the Sixties will not be repeated."

Now I haven't the slightest interest in anything religious, but I feel strongly that psychedelics are the key to life's deepest secrets, and that

"Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it, we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise?" (Wheeler)

The problem IMO is the virtual unavailability of practical information concerning psychedelics, and how they CAN be used. And science has it's limitations. Hundreds of trips have introduced me to certain "facts", for example that matter is materialized light. Now I can't prove this but I know that it is so. And I'm NOT imagining it, any more than I'm imagining that I love my wife. I know these things are so even though I can't "prove" them. Well, there are a lot of things I know that I can't prove. That doesn't mean they're not so.

What if the following were true - just saying - WHAT IF?

Human beings are light channels with an aperture like a camera. Psychedelics force the aperture open, in relation to the amount of substance consumed. Like water seeking it's own level, light will pour through any open channel and do so with full force according to aperture dilation. More than one is ready for can cause a bad trip. What if psychedelics were the only known tools for developing light throughput, and light conveyance a doorway to star birthing? What if star birthing were life's ultimate purpose, and psychedelics essential tools for enabling that?

So yes, a lot of what's been said by a lot of people is nonsensical. But dismissing revolutionary ideas out of hand can also be dangerous... (no reference to the OP)

 

[swilow]

Great post. I don't agree that we are something beyond an animal but I think your perspective is interesting.

And yes. Blanket dismissal of revolutionary ideas is not what I'm about. I want us to analyse their validity and maybe come up with a new paradigm. More revolutionary ideas, better ones

 

[Cream Gravy?]

Okay, I get what you're saying. I agree with you, that's probably what has held psychedelics back; but as I'm sure you know, the innate nature of psychedelics is to often instill a sense of pseudo-understanding. I remember the months after my first acid trip were filled with an optimism and 'spiritual' awakening so to speak; however, now after years of tripping, I find it hard to buy into much of anything. In fact I feel tripping has made me less sure of many things in my life, while cementing others.

I don't think it's possible, honestly, to separate 'church' and 'state' when it comes to drugs though. I try and imprint my brand of tripping upon others, and others upon me, but when it comes down to it psychs are an extremely individualistic class of drugs, and always come across to me as a very subjective experience. My friend has never attained any kind of life lessons from tripping, or so he says, and I'm mostly opposite him.

Potayto-potahto I say.

 

[Burnt Offerings]

The psychedelic-hallucinogen/"psychonaut" subculture is often pretty annoying...but it's not nearly as bad as the subcultures associated with other drugs.

Even the "marijuana subculture" has historically been fairly moronic. It has only improved in recent years because different, "non-traditional" users of cannabis have been entering into the milieu and that has really improved the situation IMO. I don't see that happening with psychedelics, though...it's just a lot more of a specialty market compared to marijuana or even other illegal "hard drugs". The kind of people who actively seek out & consume psychedelics tend to be the ones most susceptible to believing a bunch of hippy bullshit, thus aforementioned hippy bullshit gets perpetuated. *sigh...it's a vicious cycle.



Terrance McKenna is a funny dude, though. I have a very pleasant memory of my buddy playing a clip of McKenna on his cell phone, while I was on acid, and just laughing and laughing. I laughed until tears literally rolled down my face...just had an awesome mental image of some stunted, wizened hippy (McKenna) sitting in a lotus position and pulling on a joint while talking about elves and drugs and time travel, etc.

 

[Incunabula]

I don't think the influence of the psychedelic sub-culture on research into (or rather the lack of) clinical use of psychedelics is that big anymore, though it is clear that the use of psychedelics in the 60ies counterculture quickened their worldwide scheduling and suppression of research in the following decades. I totally get what you're saying Swillow. But as you yourself mention, a lot of research is currently taking place into the various uses of psychedelics, so it seems to me that that pseudo-spiritual-hippie reputation of psychedelics in the public opinion seem to be changing.

You can almost say, that people like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna have been supplanted in this age by people like Nichols, Shulgin and David Nutt and the Beckley foundation etc.

 

[Morninggloryseed]

Love leary. Met him in 1993 and he invited me to have a beer with him...i was just 17.

 

[herbavore]

I hear you, swillow. It is a good conversation to be having. A necessary one.

I feel that I was helped immensely by being brushed by the mystical when I was at my most lost and disconnected in my early teens. I was, and am, content to let the mystical be mystical. The closest I have ever come to understanding what happened is that I was given the opportunity to see a much larger context for my existence than what I had previously called reality. And that larger picture allowed me to shift my perception from feeling myself in a free-fall in an exploding world to someone spinning in place within a chaos of her own making. Call it wisdom or call it an effortless shift of focus or call it spiritual (I feel it was all three....at least!), I came to see LSD, mescaline, and peyote as powerfully healing drugs. So, like any 15 year old with my frontal lobe barely developed I proceeded to abuse the hell out of them, enamored with the insanity of what I was seeing and experiencing. Gone was the wisdom or the spiritual growth. Looking back on it now, I think I was enamored with myself as some kind of psyconaut warrior princess and thus, what had seemed a doorway out of my ego's angst was discovered to open both ways.8)

I believe that everyone, especially those working at MAPS and Johns Hopkins and anywhere else they are doing good research on the actual benefits, have to be very careful not to let the near-religion of psychedelics cloud their vision. I especially think this is important as people are starting to do more therapeutic work with ayahuasca.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

because mainstream society is so concerned with facts and reality?....let me know when they stop believing in magical bearded sky fathers controlling our lives.

i don't think society rejects psychedelics because they refuse to believe on nonsens...on the contrary...i think psychs are rejected because most of society believes in nonsense.

i get what you are saying though. but i don't think its the reason society rejects these drugs

 

[tokezu]

I believe the psychedelic scene is at least partially responsible for this continuing prohibition.

Isn't this essentially just blaming the victim? Yes, sometimes governments might use the 'woo' associated with psychedelics as an argument for prohibition, but I think this is a very poor excuse for continuning a policy that has clearly failed, one that we should not validate. I am not a particular fan of this tendency of some people in the psychedelic subculture either, but I feel like you are going a bit too far, laying (even just part of) the blame at their feet. Are we just theorizing about how the ideal testcase for legalizing drugs would look like? Then sure, granny needing weed for her glaucoma or MDMA for veterans with PTSD will work much better than crystal wielding hippies. But analogous to this you could say that the ideal case for condemning rape involves a 'perfect' victim, one that wasn't provocatively dressed or drunk or known to be promiscuous. Having a less than perfect victim will definitely make it harder to get people to sympathize, but we cannot blame the victim for that.

Are you really saying that people who are engaging in all this 'woo' (however we might exactly define that) should not behave like that because they are hindering legalization or have I read too much into your post? Because that argument can easily be extended to all recreational drug use. Aren't all we people who trip for fun a hindrance to the cause of suffering people who need psychedelics as medicine? I guess in a way we are and it is a good thing that organizations like MAPS concentrate so much on the medicinal value of these drugs. But I refuse to feel guilty for the fact, that the government might use my recreational use as an excuse to keep prohibition running, because it is just that, an excuse. I think the same should apply to other people who might be giving psychedelics a bad reputation even though they are not hurting anybody.

 

[Solipsis]

Well, good points, it's complicated.. it turns out it's not so easy to demonstrate the consistent effect of even non-psychoactive medications and there is a lot of manipulation of our studying of the more complicated but most valuable matters in psychiatry. Psychedelics aren't even properly accepted for research long enough, they would likely require many times the resources and time that say depression or psychosis medications get which is saying a lot.

I am kind of allergic to over half those psychedelic culture heroes, in my opinion their service which they have indeed fulfilled with good merit is one of a cultural change but not one of scientific validation. Science is not end-all-be-all nor does it trump other fields universally (I do hold it in high regard), but it is the appropriate method for what swirlow calls 'demonstrating the value'.

In a more informal setting, which is more conductive to therapy, I'd say that "change" or "transformation" appears to be demonstrated, but it is painfully hard to quantify apparently. In a reasonably informal setting but using a scientific rigor, Jons Hopkins seems to have shown quite a beautiful potential of mushrooms.

Recently acid research with fMRI has been recommenced, but it is just starting to lay a foundation within our modern situation. Perhaps the power of psychedelics for catalyzing 'change' indifferently is something that is scary to a lot of people, because it implies some unknown outcome of change which is scary. And indeed if we don't apply it well, the change may be quite negative and we cannot really use animal models for preliminary tests. In a way it's asking a lot for the trust to test for a long time with those kind of uncertainties, for people who are less committed to the belief that it will be truly worth it in the end, it's too much to ask.

In general, I think it's good to be skeptical about all this stuff, in my case first came the "I want to believe" phase, but I corrected myself later and think the view on it matured. None of this should stop us from proceeding with the research, but the enthousiasm of these psychedelic heroes should be taken with a grain of salt and placed in the right matured modern perspective. Just because they have a positive outlook doesn't mean you shouldn't keep a close eye on your skepticism. It's not being a bitter old party-pooper to do so.

The psychedelic scene enabling this prohibition seems unfair. The pharmaceutical industry has ignored opioid risks for quite a while and it has hardly put a dent in abuse, even when they eventually admitted their failure to recognize publicly underestimating oxycontin etc or lying about it. There is quite a difference between using a medicine in therapy and just prescribing it to people to use at home. Plenty of dangerous substances are administered in a professional setting that you really can't send a patient off with to take at home. So I don't understand how any sort of abuse outside of a professional setting should have to say something about the potential within that setting. (Not to mention the many non-medicine objects that are dangerous to handle in a casual setting that they won't stop selling.)
For vets with PTSD or something like that, I think they'd better damn well admit the problem and condone MDMA research etc, concerns about abuse by ravers should really not be a concern, that's the responsibility of those handling the medication.

 

[swilow]

Some really interesting and useful posts guys. I was really hoping to bounce this idea around a bit. I can see that I was quite unclear with my intentions. I blame the drugs.

I would alsp point out, I am not certain of what I am saying, I am speculating but it is borne from a frustratrtion or alienation from psychedelic culture which I often feel trivialises these drugs or attributes political/religious values to them. And I'm not talking about recreational use at all- I basically only use these things for fun and its likely that this sort of flippant usage contributes more to prohibition and the stymieing of research than claims of crystal healing and such. I guess I am a hypocrite. :D

I don't think the influence of the psychedelic sub-culture on research into (or rather the lack of) clinical use of psychedelics is that big anymore, though it is clear that the use of psychedelics in the 60ies counterculture quickened their worldwide scheduling and suppression of research in the following decades. I totally get what you're saying Swillow. But as you yourself mention, a lot of research is currently taking place into the various uses of psychedelics, so it seems to me that that pseudo-spiritual-hippie reputation of psychedelics in the public opinion seem to be changing.

You can almost say, that people like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna have been supplanted in this age by people like Nichols, Shulgin and David Nutt and the Beckley foundation etc.

I agree, it is changing. But think of the huge gap in time there has been since the era of the first wave of western psychedelia and the current, more scientific approach. A lot of wasted years IMO.

because mainstream society is so concerned with facts and reality?....let me know when they stop believing in magical bearded sky fathers controlling our lives.

i don't think society rejects psychedelics because they refuse to believe on nonsens...on the contrary...i think psychs are rejected because most of society believes in nonsense.

i get what you are saying though. but i don't think its the reason society rejects these drugs

I think society rejects these because they are scared of the unique thought processes these drugs can inspire, plus there is an idea that the drugs are physically dangerous.

To be honest, if people who want, say, mushrooms to be legal, I do not believe that this will happen if advocated for by users who 'speak' to mushrooms. I wouldn't be all that supportive of a legalising a substance that makes people think they are talking to a fungus. It subsumes the real benefits IMO.

Isn't this essentially just blaming the victim? Yes, sometimes governments might use the 'woo' associated with psychedelics as an argument for prohibition, but I think this is a very poor excuse for continuning a policy that has clearly failed, one that we should not validate. I am not a particular fan of this tendency of some people in the psychedelic subculture either, but I feel like you are going a bit too far, laying (even just part of) the blame at their feet.

I'm not trying to blame anyone, though I guess it seems that way. But yeah, do you think LSD would have been made illegal in 1966 had Tim Leary not started making ridiculous claims like his Playboy interview where he said LSD is like '1000 orgasms', or that young people should "drop out" of society? Or that his actual research, which could have been valuable and practical, ended up simply being drug fueled parties? Not long after that at Millbrook essentially creating a cult-like structure around use?

The Merry Pranksters, whose psychedelic activism I am more supportive of*, reacted against this millieu by pointing out its superficiality.

*I respect anarchism much more than I do spirituality but thats just me I guess.

Are we just theorizing about how the ideal testcase for legalizing drugs would look like? Then sure, granny needing weed for her glaucoma or MDMA for veterans with PTSD will work much better than crystal wielding hippies. But analogous to this you could say that the ideal case for condemning rape involves a 'perfect' victim, one that wasn't provocatively dressed or drunk or known to be promiscuous. Having a less than perfect victim will definitely make it harder to get people to sympathize, but we cannot blame the victim for that.

That's very true, and I don't want to outright blame the crystal-wielders. I would actually prefer to dismantle those sort of unfounded, nonsensical ideas. Rather than accept that psychedelics cause people to see cause-and-effect where it isn't present, I would like to examine some of the core beliefs of many in the psychedelic scene and discard those that are not useful, that are conjecture and that alienate these susbtances from being used by a greater subset of people, or just being available. So, in some senses, I think the psychedelic scene bears some responsibility- but I am not talking about recreational use. That is all I do with these drugs. I do not believe they will save us from ourselves, I think they can probably effectively treat some inherent and often intractable conditions of human nature.

But yeah, I am partially wondering about the ideal test case for legalisation. Its not going to happen because tripping is fun or because it allows communication with the divine.

Are you really saying that people who are engaging in all this 'woo' (however we might exactly define that) should not behave like that because they are hindering legalization or have I read too much into your post? Because that argument can easily be extended to all recreational drug use. Aren't all we people who trip for fun a hindrance to the cause of suffering people who need psychedelics as medicine? .

I answered this in part above, but in answer to that last question, I am not sure. The tripper who enjoys LSD at a doof isn't really a 'threat' but the mushroom eater who starts claiming that the mushrooms have spoken to them and imparted objective wisdom is a threat. By threat, I mean a threat to legitimacy. To me, those ideas are a step below delusion (if not firmly there). I cannot expect society to legalise a drug that seems to explicitly cause humans to suffer delusions.

Again, I sincerely hope I am not offending or upsetting anyone. I don't think I have but I am not intending to. My thoughts aren't exactly crystal clear on this. But I am really tired of reading the nonsense people spout about psychedelics. I guess it is a personal thing, but my most rewarding trips usually reiterate that the world is godless but there can be peace found within your skull.

For me, I deeply respect people such as Shulgin, David Nichols, organisations like MAPS. I value science much more than religion, which of course influences my views. I suppose it seems like I am saying that only MY form of use is acceptable. Perhaps I need to rethink how I communicate such an idea.

TL;DR:

Ultimately, psychedelics did not change the global society, but they did enact huge change in individual lives. But associating these drugs with societal change and religious movements makes them a threat that they really aren't.

 

[Burnt Offerings]

TL;DR:

Ultimately, psychedelics did not change the global society, but they did enact huge change in individual lives. But associating these drugs with societal change and religious movements makes them a threat that they really aren't.

So basically the hippies think, "these drugs have the potential to undermine our entire religious and socio-economic order, maaan", and they view that as a potentially positive thing...but the Establishment also accepts that argument, only viewing it in a negative light rather than a positive one?

Interesting. I've heard many people who embrace psychedelic hallucinogen usage say that if psychedelic drug use was higher among the general population, this would somehow undermine capitalism and monotheistic religion and all kinds of other societal pillars. To me a lot of that always seemed too optimistic...for one, a lot of people just shouldn't take these drugs.

To me a large amount of why strong psychedelic-hallucinogens in particular became criminalized was fairly simple: shit has the potential to go very south if a user's experience goes off the rails. Someone can think they're ready for something like LSD, take a bit too much and end up on a disoriented walk unto the freeway. I recently read an anecdote in a book regarding gang life on native American reservations, about a young gang member who shot a rival, then turned himself into the police (with the murder weapon) after dropping acid & smoking a blunt...he said that he wanted to trip in one of their jail cells!

The point is that sometimes people high on acid or mushrooms or [insert drug here] make questionable choices, and its easy for an Establishment already hostile to drugs in general to point to hysterical reports in the press when it comes time to criminalize a substance.

 

[Incunabula]

I actually think Burnt offerings is on to something. Recreational use of psychedelics is as much a part of causing the stigmatization of psychedelics by society, just think teenage NBOMe deaths.

On the topic of psychedelic research, I'm going to see a talk by this guy in january: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.erritzoe

He's the one responsible for the research into use of psilocybin for depression at the Imperial College London. It's going to be really interesting.

I guess I am a hypocrite. :D

We all are now and then, and it's okay as long as one is aware of it, lol

 

[TheAppleCore]

I used to be fairly effusive about the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, simply based on my own subjective interpretation of how they affected my life, but I've grown a bit more humble as time passes. I've had a lot of fun with psychedelics, and I grew a lot during the time that I first discovered them, but who knows what would've happened without any drugs? I'd have to step into a time machine and do my life over to know.

I think the crux of the problem you're describing, Swilow, is that people jump to conclusions about psychedelics without having enough solid evidence. In other words, it's all well and fine to speculate about alternate dimensions and machine elves, but let's make it clear that it's nothing more than highly imaginative speculation.

 

[cyberius]

Right there with you buddy. Psychedelics make your personality change, that's about it. There's nothing at the end of the rabbit hole.

 

[JackARoe]

i don't think society rejects psychedelics because they refuse to believe on nonsens...on the contrary...i think psychs are rejected because most of society believes in nonsense.

Right on. I like when someone said psychedelics are the opposite of the term hallucinogen. De-hallucinogens. I can't remember the exact term. But for some of us it is a good tool to see through nonsense.

Then there are others that start solidified belief systems that turn into religions. But there are also definite objective tangible results that can be shared as we saw in the 60's with music, art and ideas. Nothing wrong with that. But yeah, I get annoyed when people think they have the whole answer and everyone else is lost. I see that in people that have never taken a psychedelic even more.

Usually when a thread like this is started something specific annoyed the OP. Since psychedelics work on the mind that really is a whole subjective area so it is understandable people identify and give in to certain beliefs.

One thing I will say that could sound wishy washy is we see some people understand the nature of Love a lot more. Love is not wishy washy. It is why I do just about everything I do. Get married, visit my parents, buy a house, go to work to sustain that. Love is to me the strongest force that pulls people together or separates them. It should be recognized as a force. The things people do for Love! (that is as washy as I will get )

And paying attention to people is giving love. My dog who is sitting near me wants my attention. When someone is giving flowers to a lover they REALLY paid attention. lol

I could probably keep writing. I did read all the posts first. Good thread.

 

[pupnik]

I am glad you pay attention and give flowers.
although I do think that much of flower giving is perfunctory or not from the heart.
this is not just an aftermath of the 60's, so the OP's denigration of discombobulated fools pretending enlightenment only highlights a bubble, the underlying dishonesty has always been rampant.
it resolves as insecurity
wanting to belong
doing what you think you should
and just plain ignorance.

JackARoe is right, all you need is love
but you have to mean it
and you even have to be able to feel for the fools just as you can appreciate dogs and share flowers without thinking that you successfully just sneaked into fort knox and wont be recognized as a fraud behind the magnificent bloomery of hippiedom.