Ken Kesey

[herbavore]

It's not they it gives anybody a profoundly new way of seeing reality. I mean it does, but it's not in a profound way.

Perhaps it was because I experienced it so young, or perhaps more because of the depth of disconnection I was experiencing, I will always credit psychedelics with profoundly changing my entire outlook on myself and my ability to find a home in this temporary life. I probably only used them for a total of two years with an occasional use of psilocybin in my twenties and yet, at 63, they still affect my way of seeing both life and death, of understanding in the same multifaceted thought, my insignificance and my miraculous existence and perhaps most treasured of all, all these years later I still see the occasional "trails" and sparkly outlines to anything from a dinner plate to tulip bud, and think," The door is opening!" with the same level of anticipation and wonder I experienced 40 years ago.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Is there something about LSD that, if you take it enough, it turns everybody into the same person, in this case, an egomaniac?

No.

As for Cassady, first and foremost he was a sexist, alcoholic wife beater. Fuck all to do with LSD. Most people here would never forgive a woman that.

 

[socko]

Perhaps it was because I experienced it so young, or perhaps more because of the depth of disconnection I was experiencing, I will always credit psychedelics with profoundly changing my entire outlook on myself and my ability to find a home in this temporary life. I probably only used them for a total of two years with an occasional use of psilocybin in my twenties and yet, at 63, they still affect my way of seeing both life and death, of understanding in the same multifaceted thought, my insignificance and my miraculous existence and perhaps most treasured of all, all these years later I still see the occasional "trails" and sparkly outlines to anything from a dinner plate to tulip bud, and think," The door is opening!" with the same level of anticipation and wonder I experienced 40 years ago.

I've seen trails and fractals all my life, and I first remember it when I was exactly 5 years old. I used to stare into space many times at taht age and watch them. They were and are somethign that not even an army of Disney CGI animators could create. The geomtric patterns are always changign but they fall into overall themes. Some of them are indeed reminiscent of complex molecules and even DNA. Psychedelics sometimes made them more prominent, changed the theme, or triggered them when I wasn't seeing them.

Maybe I just never had a deepp enough experience with it. Whenever I took a heroic dose, instead of making me think deeply, it would make me delirious. Moderate doses induced deep thought and brainstorming sessions, but it and the "insights" weren't anything that I hadn't already been mulling over i the back of my mind.

 

[noone1]

I get the impression that was the case with a lot of the LSD promoters, not just Kesey. Timothy Leary was also an egomaniac who didn't come across as having empathy.

Is there something about LSD that, if you take it enough, it turns everybody into the same person, in this case, an egomaniac?

Kesey was an egomaniac in his own way but he at least admitted it as he got older and died of alcoholism. I don't think it had anything to do with the LSD per se only that the people who get remembered the most for promoting LSD claimed to have their egos shattered by psychedelics but really didn't, that's why they get remembered. They where deeply flawed yet talented men.

No.

As for Cassady, first and foremost he was a sexist, alcoholic wife beater. Fuck all to do with LSD. Most people here would never forgive a woman that.

Let us be fair to Mr Cassady the alcoholic was Kerouac, Neal was a drug addict, definitely a sex addict, but he didn't really get into booze as much as he did speed and pot. And yes he would use not only women but everyone around him as things for his own gratification.

 

[Xorkoth]

Is there something about LSD that, if you take it enough, it turns everybody into the same person, in this case, an egomaniac?

Definitely not. But for the types who are naturally egomaniacs or sociopaths, it certainly facilitates a more complete immersion into that state.

 

[herbavore]

I've seen trails and fractals all my life, and I first remember it when I was exactly 5 years old. I used to stare into space many times at taht age and watch them. They were and are somethign that not even an army of Disney CGI animators could create. The geomtric patterns are always changign but they fall into overall themes. Some of them are indeed reminiscent of complex molecules and even DNA. Psychedelics sometimes made them more prominent, changed the theme, or triggered them when I wasn't seeing them.

Yes, my sister also saw complex and fluid geometries as a young child. They always happened in the dark when she was supposed to be going to sleep and they scared her to death. She called them "wires" when my mom would try to understand what was happening-- I think because they started as lines and grew more complex. Years later I would recognize what she was talking about because I got a much more detailed description from her (we shared a bed and a room all our childhoods). They seemed to stop plaguing her around adolescence; did yours persist at the same rate? It's pretty interesting that some people need a chemical substance to see this and some people's minds serve it up drug free.

 

[socko]

Yes, my sister also saw complex and fluid geometries as a young child. They always happened in the dark when she was supposed to be going to sleep and they scared her to death. She called them "wires" when my mom would try to understand what was happening-- I think because they started as lines and grew more complex. Years later I would recognize what she was talking about because I got a much more detailed description from her (we shared a bed and a room all our childhoods). They seemed to stop plaguing her around adolescence; did yours persist at the same rate? It's pretty interesting that some people need a chemical substance to see this and some people's minds serve it up drug free.

Did hers stop completely? That is what often happens.

Mine started as "orbs," but there were wiry structures too. They were prominent in the dark when I was going to sleep. When I was little, they would morph into demonic faces and would leer at me. My mother had been into the worst kind of Fundamentalist Christianity and told me they were demons going to take me to hell because I was a bad child. I needed a nightlight for years.

Mine never stopped. When I got older and I started thinking for myself, they stopped looking evil. They only grew more elaborate, so elaborate in fact that their complex geometric elements eventually rendered into animated realistic figures and scenes. That's how it is now.

Yesterday when I was going to sleep, they were jungle scenes. There were tortoises whose shells had scales that were vibrating fractals. There were jungle snakes whose scales and markings were complex geometric shapes. It didn't stop after I fell asleep. When I was asleep at different times during the ngith, they were jungle vines.

Maybe this is why I never had a 'break-through' experience on psychdelics. There was nothing left for me to break into. Psychedelics don't impress me as much as they impressed people like Kesey who thought they were a Holy Sacrament.

The things that helped me have life-changing realizations were never drugs but were living life, exploring, working, meeting interesting people, reading, and thinking, among others. Psychedelics were very minor if anything at all.

The one drug I can think of that affected how I deal with life is probably cocaine. It helped me overcome my crippling shyness and social anxiety.

 

[herbavore]

^I would put art up there with psychedelics for me. Both provided a profound connection when I was mentally (spiritually?) unmoored. The other things you name (reading, especially for me poetry and literature, relationships with people, travel/exploring, ruminating) are all important to me. Psychedelics were like a brief dose of a medicine. I took them for a short time, I got something I needed from them and then I stopped. The other sources of joy in my life go on--they feel more like the fabric of life.