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Ralph Waldo Emerson and Psychedelics

C

crice6505

Greenlighter
Joined
Dec 1, 2011
Messages
14
Hello, It has literally been years since I have last posted. I've been off doing a lot of my own independent research on drugs and finally came across a question that I thought to be worth posting on the site.

I wasn't exactly sure where to put this as it is more of an historical question than one directly related to my personal psychedelic use and it also deals with philosophy. I'd like to thank the mod who places this thread in the correct section.

Now, for the actual content:

Ralph Waldo Emerson was effectively the poster boy for transcendentalism. For those of you who do not know what it is, I recommend doing a quick reading of wikipedia to figure out what it is.

While reading his essay "Nature," I stumbled across a passage that seems to be an allusion to a psychedelic experience.

"Standing on the bare ground,-my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,-all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. To be brothers, to be acquaintances,-master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature."

He literally describes an ego-death and a nature walk...

My question is: Is it possible that Emerson had an experience with a psychedelic substance? Could he have ate the wrong mushroom one time only to wind up with a changed outlook on life?

The discussion of ego-death outside the world of psychedelic drugs and philosophy is certainly rare, so this really sparked my curiosity and I couldn't find any answers on Google. Are there any historians among you that could lend to the possibility that Emerson had a psychedelic experience?
 
I wish I could provide a more erudite answer but apart from vaguely knowing the name I had to rely on google.
The non-erudite answer is that medicine was herbal and somewhat basic then and food frequently tainted by moulds and fungus so he could well have taken all sorts of psychadelics both deliberately in the form of medicine, or accidentally by way of ergot in rye flour or similar.
So I think it entirely possible that he imbibed something trippy and possibly more than once if he treated his stomach ache with belladonna, for example. There was no prohibition of substances then, you could take whatever you liked or indeed make your patented medicine from whatever you liked so I would imagine he would have taken stuff that would make us very alarmed.
 
Thank you Greyhounder, That sent me on a path of some research.

Turns out that in 1827, Emerson ended up with tuberculosis and was sent to a hospital in Saint Augustine, Florida.

I looked for several psychotropics that grow naturally in Florida that might have been used in snake oil/treacle/panacea cures.

I found:

Psychotria Nervosa
Psilocybin Mushrooms (verifiable?)
Morning Glories
HB Woodrose
Sassafras
Various toads (verifiable?)
Various amanitas (verifiable?)

If anyone has information on whether this might have been used to cure tuberculosis in the early 1800's, or if it was even growing in Florida in the 1800's, that would help.

Thanks again.

Update: I have found out that St. Augustine Florida is in the Northeastern part of the state. Originally, this was occupied by the Timucua. The Timucua have "medicine men"/"shamans" according to their site, but I have found no "list" or references to any botanicals used spiritually/religiously.

I will continue research on the hospital that Emerson visited to see if there is any references to cures, medicines, or herbs being used by colonists that originally came from Native Americans.
 
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He might well have had access to hashish at the time, and taken quite large doses of it. I know other writers during the 1800s had hashish experiences that influenced their writings.
 
Now that reminds me of 'asthma cigarettes'
look up an article called "Divine stramonium": The rise and fall of smoking for asthma.By Mark Jackson. (I am being useless and cant link or even copy and paste at the moment)
 
Transitionsynth: looks like he definitely would have had access.

“Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions the surest poison is time."

He did say this, but he regarded it as poison. Seems like he may have avoided it.

That said, a lot of his loved ones died before him, including his protege and best friend.

I wonder if he used then...
 
But then consider the many people who got ego loss without psychedelics; some listed in the ego death/depersonalisation thread. Though then there's this quote: "That which we call sin in others is experiment for us" which could be about drugs (found on a dodgy internet quote site)
 
There surely would have been some psilocybe mushrooms in his neck of the woods. Can only really speculate that he ate them, it's probably quite possible that he could have gathered and eaten them intentionally or not, but I don't think we can know. Sounds like typical mushroom trip stuff to me, although there are lots of ways to access that perspective including excessive navel-gazing and probably even just getting drunk and staring at the stars.

But I think it's pretty plausible that he ate some mushrooms for dinner and went for a walk and had no idea that he was tripping balls. I remember an aquaintance's anecdote where her dad gathered some wild mushrooms and the whole family ate them for dinner. Everyone ended up tripping, without anyone really realizing what was going on, no one know they were magic. The whole family was high, but because they were naive to PDs and the fact that they had just ingested magic mushrooms, they just thought they were having a fun and goofy evening together. The acquaintance was a young teen at the time, and the next day the mom was like "I think those were funnny mushrooms..."

Probably lots of stories like that around... it happens.
 
That's a funny story.

I know this stuff happens accidentally, I was just looking for specific evidence.

I read "Nature" for a class, and he asked us to describe what this passage sounded like it was saying. The professor likes me, so I wasn't afraid to say that it blatantly sounded like a psychedelic experience.

He said that he agreed, but said that it would be an "anachronism."

I definitely disagreed, but out of curiosity, wanted to see if I could find proof.

Also, I found out that tuberculosis could cause neuropathy. Is neurogenesis a plausible cure for neuropathy? If so, I think we might be able to conclude that psychedelics might have been used as a method of rehabilitation for tuberculosis patients.
 
crice6505 said:
Is neurogenesis a plausible cure for neuropathy? If so, I think we might be able to conclude that psychedelics might have been used as a method of rehabilitation for tuberculosis patients.
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Are you sure psychedelics can cause neurogenesis? I am not but it would be cool of course. Have you any proof links? (nevermind, just googled one of them)
Anyway, it doesn't proof that back in 19th century anyone could assume that psychedelics can cause it. Moreover, there weren't exist such term as neuron until 1881 (and it still was theoretical knowledge as I assume) and so neurogenesis couldn't be plausible cause for using psychedelics. But again it is about official medicine. We can't know what did specific doctor in the specific hospital for curing his patients and what experimental drugs could he use - if only anyone have access to hospital archive or library at least (preferably in Florida) and could go and check what medicine used in 19th. Internet research can work too I guess.
 
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cybergollum said:
Are you sure psychedelics can cause neurogenesis? I am not but it would be cool of course. Have you any proof links? (nevermind, just googled one of them)
Anyway, it doesn't proof that back in 19th century anyone could assume that psychedelics can cause it. Moreover, there weren't exist such term as neuron until 1881 (and it still was theoretical knowledge as I assume) and so neurogenesis couldn't be plausible cause for using psychedelics. But again it is about official medicine. We can't know what did specific doctor in the specific hospital for curing his patients and what experimental drugs could he use - if only anyone have access to hospital archive or library at least (preferably in Florida) and could go and check what medicine used in 19th. Internet research can work too I guess.
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Whether they had the terminology or research into the medical terminology doesn't seem to conclude whether treatment existed for it.

For example, Many theorize the the possessed people in the Bible were epileptic. Jesus anointed them with cannabis tinctured olive oil and they were cured.

At the time, no one knew how cannabis can treat epilepsy, but it was still used.

Similarly, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for this treatment to exist without knowing why it works.

My main question about that was, since neuropathy only deals with nerves outside the brain, does neurogenesis do anything to treat it?
 
I think there's a tendency for people who use psychedelics to assume that to have a transcendental experience you must have drugs. I think people can have transcendental experiences off just about anything - from playing golf to walking the dog. Emerson spent a lot of time in nature which can also give people transcendental experiences. I think transcendental experiences are pretty common in the human condition.
 
^Good post Iss :)

perpetualdawn said:
Sounds like typical mushroom trip stuff to me
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But it doesn't really does it? He doesn't seem to be referring to wild visual hallucinations in that essay does he? I take his writing to be largely ornate, poetic whimsy then being a true recounting of sequenced events.

According to the book 'Shroom' by Andy Letcher, there are reports of psilocybin mushrooms being accidentally ingested in Victorian times and being recognised only as poisonous at that time. The effects were not seen as appealing and they were considered largely toxic in the western world.

crice6505 said:
Also, I found out that tuberculosis could cause neuropathy. Is neurogenesis a plausible cure for neuropathy? If so, I think we might be able to conclude that psychedelics might have been used as a method of rehabilitation for tuberculosis patients.
Click to expand...

I think that's drawing a long bow, personally. The idea that psilocybin promotes neurogenesis was only tested at what researchers considered sub-psychedelic doses anyhow.

Still, thanks for mentioning this guy because now I'm going to read a bit more about him :)
 
willow11 said:
But it doesn't really does it? He doesn't seem to be referring to wild visual hallucinations in that essay does he?
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I think it does resemble a mushroom trip; not everyone gets wild visual hallucinations (myself included), and a trip can pretty easily turn into that kind of thing, for me at least.

But I do agree that it's a stretch to assume it was mushrooms, or any other psychoactive something that triggered the experience he described. Its not completely implausible that he consumed some 'shrooms by accident, but there's really not much to go on beyond a hunch or wishful thinking.

Anyways, it doesn't seem like it's worth fussing about whether so-and-so did mushrooms. I think trippers tend to obsess over this more than is worthwhile.

The neurogenesis thing sounds like wishful thinking too. It would be cool if it's true, but my jury's out on that. The reference I read didn't convince me of much.
 
willow11 said:
According to the book 'Shroom' by Andy Letcher, there are reports of psilocybin mushrooms being accidentally ingested in Victorian times and being recognised only as poisonous at that time. The effects were not seen as appealing and they were considered largely toxic in the western world.
Click to expand...

True - the idea that everyone who takes mushrooms in the past would find the experience as jolly as a 70s hippie who knew exactly what they were and that they were harmless is just daft. As Hoffman said about the first time he took LSD and had the bad trip - "My main fear was that I was on an unknown drug and could have either poisoned myself or done myself permanent damage". That's a pretty terrifying fear.

Tho I do still chuckle at that story in Lecthers book of the first reported shroom intoxication when a family in the 1700s or 1800s ingested mushrooms and then called the doctor who found the child "unable to stop laughing" =D
 
izzy said:
I think there's a tendency for people who use psychedelics to assume that to have a transcendental experience you must have drugs. I think people can have transcendental experiences off just about anything - from playing golf to walking the dog. Emerson spent a lot of time in nature which can also give people transcendental experiences. I think transcendental experiences are pretty common in the human condition.
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Verily, verily. Personally, I have had a number of transcendental experiences while sober, and while not sober but not tripping.


It seems odd that sentiments like this, which have run through spiritual and poetic works for centuries, for millenia, are myopically assumed by the psychedelic community to be the result of the consumption of psychotropic botanicals and naught else.
 
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I think the most deranged version of it I've heard is the claim that religion can only come from psychedelic experiences.
 
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