• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ
  • PD Moderators: Esperighanto | JackARoe |

Do psychedelics have a valid roll in society?

tommy34

tommy34

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 13, 2010
Messages
313
Hi everyone, My name is Tom and I am new to this forum. I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, if so could you please direct me to this section.

I beleive psychedelics have a valid roll in our society. For thousands of years shamans handed out psychedelics to enrich their community with knowledge and insight. Have we been robbed of this power? I would like to look into this deeper but first I would like to hear other people's opinions.

psychedelics and all drugs for that matter will be used for recreation and religious purposes by many people no matter what is done to control them. I would also like to hear some ideas about what could be done to better educate people on drugs to reduce adduce.

Cheers
Tom
 
For me personally i believe the the use of psychedelic's is not as high as it should be. The use of addictive substance's out weighs it terribly. Alot of my friends will almost always rather go for some molly or coke. Little do they know that the psychedelic experience actually increases the evolutionary process greatly. While the addictive substance's cloud your brain dull the thought process.

The more people that can be turned onto the psychedelic mind-state the better off this world will be. We will have a more intelligent community base as apposed to a munch of E-tarded folks who dont see the bigger picture.
 
Thank you for your responses. I think a much wider and intellectual community of psychedelics used could better our society. I, personally have only used psychedelics a couple of times. My first experience was very peaceful and one that I look back upon today as a reality check. I now beleive that I have a much greater understanding of our existence but still understand that I know nothing. It may sound stupid but my experience taught me that love is everything. I have found myself telling my mother that I love her, when I didn't do so before. If there were better eduction on psychedelics and their powers, abuse would be almost illuminated and insight would be dramatically increased.
 
tommy34 said:
Thank you for your responses. I think a much wider and intellectual community of psychedelics used could better our society. I, personally have only used psychedelics a couple of times. My first experience was very peaceful and one that I look back upon today as a reality check. I now beleive that I have a much greater understanding of our existence but still understand that I know nothing. It may sound stupid but my experience taught me that love is everything. I have found myself telling my mother that I love her, when I didn't do so before. If there were better eduction on psychedelics and their powers, abuse would be almost illuminated and insight would be dramatically increased.
Click to expand...

Yet the majority of people tend to look down on them or buy into all the absurd myths spread around about it.

After having a few powerful trips myself, I feel similar to what you described. It was a wake up call helping me pushing away a lot of negative energy, lots of self-analysis.

So in my opinion they have a very valid roll, more funded research needs to be done instead of not allowing it.
 
If they have a valid purpose in individual people's lives, they by definition also have a valid purpose in greater society because society is comprised of multitudes of individuals. If individual people are improving themselves through the psychedelic experience (which I have seen often), then the net impact on society is positive.

Of course, I have also seen people use psychedelics destructively (as people will inevitably do with any powerful tool)-- so the 'equilibrium' between constructive and destructive has many confounding variables.

Psychedelics are a tricky subject when considering their overall impact on humanity. They are so incredibly powerful, they warp reality at it's foundation: the psyche. Its extremely hard to quantify the impact of such a phenomenon.

I will say this, though: when psychedelics are employed appropriately, magical things start to happen (literally, the root of the word 'magic' is the latin magis, meaning "more"-- magic just means 'something further / something more'). Reality shifts its conformation to accommodate the heightened awareness in the collective unconscious, to maintain equilibrium if you will. The magic within the human imagination begins to pour out into reality in the form of art, discovery, and revival / renewal of basic human traditions.

So, I think that psychedelics definitely can have a net positive impact. But it necessitates that the drug-takers are "hip to what's going on", if you catch my drift. It can't all just be about the drugs, it needs to be primarily about a lot of stuff OTHER THAN THE DRUGS. People, community, art, music, discovery, exploration, appreciation of nature and our origins, etc.

The drugs are just the catalyst-- they are only useful when paired with an optimal situation for their use. All the other variables must be in place for the drugs to really catalyze greatness.

I've come to realize that you don't even need such catalysis, though. Its more necessary for beginners who haven't yet felt out the territory. Eventually, you can navigate that same territory without psychedelics. I'm not saying that you can trip balls without ingesting any chemicals, but you gain the ability to let your perspective shift and crawl, aligning with the stream of consciousness of the moment.

Ultimately, my advice is this: take all this psychedelic wonderment out of your head and give it to the world as a gift. You can only do this through some form of creative expression. Make manifest the beauty within you! :)
 
Great post Rog

I agree about pretty much all of that. I think they definitely could have a valid place in society, however, it would a fucking CHORE to integrate that into our society in it's current state. We live in a world of instant gratification, with the general attitude in modern society today this simply would not work.
 
It'd be something if we could tag every work of art, every piece of media, and every advancement in science that had some connection to drugs. I think a large scale diagram that showed all the connections in one place might astound some people. To think of some of the things that became common place to people's lives that probably wouldn't have existed without the influence of some drug or other...the whole field of psychology for instance, and everything that keeps spilling out of that whole cornucopia into our daily lives. But even less obvious influences, like the floppy disc, or the discovery of the dna helix, or certain iconic tv shows even like Saturday Night Live, or almost all of any music that's been popular ever. Stuff that now gets piped into dentist offices while you get a root canal (and nitrous! YES! looooooove the sweet air! Just like William James! And David goes to the dentist kid too!) but now has become such a backdrop to people's lives, and even in the lives of people who staunchly oppose drugs...it's just so backwards. There'd be no stairway to heaven without a ton of drugs first...and people just don't get that!
 
Roger&Me said:
If they have a valid purpose in individual people's lives, they by definition also have a valid purpose in greater society because society is comprised of multitudes of individuals. If individual people are improving themselves through the psychedelic experience (which I have seen often), then the net impact on society is positive.

Of course, I have also seen people use psychedelics destructively (as people will inevitably do with any powerful tool)-- so the 'equilibrium' between constructive and destructive has many confounding variables.

Psychedelics are a tricky subject when considering their overall impact on humanity. They are so incredibly powerful, they warp reality at it's foundation: the psyche. Its extremely hard to quantify the impact of such a phenomenon.

I will say this, though: when psychedelics are employed appropriately, magical things start to happen (literally, the root of the word 'magic' is the latin magis, meaning "more"-- magic just means 'something further / something more'). Reality shifts its conformation to accommodate the heightened awareness in the collective unconscious, to maintain equilibrium if you will. The magic within the human imagination begins to pour out into reality in the form of art, discovery, and revival / renewal of basic human traditions.

So, I think that psychedelics definitely can have a net positive impact. But it necessitates that the drug-takers are "hip to what's going on", if you catch my drift. It can't all just be about the drugs, it needs to be primarily about a lot of stuff OTHER THAN THE DRUGS. People, community, art, music, discovery, exploration, appreciation of nature and our origins, etc.

The drugs are just the catalyst-- they are only useful when paired with an optimal situation for their use. All the other variables must be in place for the drugs to really catalyze greatness.

I've come to realize that you don't even need such catalysis, though. Its more necessary for beginners who haven't yet felt out the territory. Eventually, you can navigate that same territory without psychedelics. I'm not saying that you can trip balls without ingesting any chemicals, but you gain the ability to let your perspective shift and crawl, aligning with the stream of consciousness of the moment.

Ultimately, my advice is this: take all this psychedelic wonderment out of your head and give it to the world as a gift. You can only do this through some form of creative expression. Make manifest the beauty within you! :)
Click to expand...


Exactly, well said. Psychedelics should play an important role in bringing about love in society but instead they have turned all things psychedelic into a funny/dirty hippie/counter culture mess.
 
Roger&Me said:
Ultimately, my advice is this: take all this psychedelic wonderment out of your head and give it to the world as a gift. You can only do this through some form of creative expression.
Click to expand...

I've come to the identical conclusion, and recently this has become essentially my entire life.

:)
 
I do think that psychedelics have great potential, but they can also be dangerous. I don't think that they should be used by the majority of the population. Some people may take LSD and find compassion for the human race. Others like Charles Manson and his family find only hate and destruction.
 
^ Charles Manson took LSD?


Psychedelics DO have a great potential for destruction as well as benefit -- what must be done, rather than extrapolating the negative consequences of a few cases to the entire human race, and making broad generalizations about the destructive nature of the chemicals (which seems to be unnervingly popular), we need to tease apart the destructive from constructive application.

This is sort of a personal frustration for me, as someone who has been the recipient of deep psychedelic healing. I feel obligated to spread awareness of one of the best-kept secrets of medicine, BUT I have to take care not to encourage unhealthy use, or ABuse, of these tools.
 
Big)Sky said:
For me personally i believe the the use of psychedelic's is not as high as it should be. The use of addictive substance's out weighs it terribly. Alot of my friends will almost always rather go for some molly or coke. Little do they know that the psychedelic experience actually increases the evolutionary process greatly. While the addictive substance's cloud your brain dull the thought process.

The more people that can be turned onto the psychedelic mind-state the better off this world will be. We will have a more intelligent community base as apposed to a munch of E-tarded folks who dont see the bigger picture.
Click to expand...

Im willing to contend that MDMA is not only psychedelic but one of the best psychedelics there is. Look at the results with returning iraqui war vets being given MDMA for PTSD. eventhough the studies are in their infancy its shown great promise so far.

There were acid heads in the 60's partying on the drug and dancing like spaced out seaweed, dont act like ecstasy is the only psychedelic that's abused.
 
Of course!!!!!!!!

Roger made many great points, so I don't need to make many.


If you use them to feel the LOVE that surrounds us, and then SPREAD IT!!!!!

Please do

Please, please do.
 
Definitely. People should be allowed to expand there awareness infinitely. But more than that the shaman today is the wests psychiatrists and they should be able to help people with them.
LSD/ibogaine for addicts, MDMA in therapy etc...
 
DwayneHoover said:
> Do psychedelics have a valid roll in society?

Only if you are aware that "roll" is a distinct and quite different word from "role."

Someone else made the same error in a post, Geez how old are you people? Or is English your 2nd language? Did you flunk out of grammar school?

[Sorry, sometimes I transform into a persnickedy old school marm!]
Click to expand...

I gave him the benefit of the doubt and took it as a delicious pun, actually. :D

Keep in mind that often people posting on bluelight have had a joint or two or whatever, and are just shooting the shit in a friendly way most of the time. Spelling errors aren't any type of valid indicator of age or intelligence. That's just silly, there are tons of people who are brilliant and quite capable but not gifted in linguistics.

As an extreme example, one of my professors is a world-renowned polymer chemist that is so dyslexic he often misspells the word 'polymer'! (in all sorts of different goofy permutations). :D But despite his linguistic handicap, he has impeccable visuospatial ability and has the ability to think about problems in very unique ways. I'm sure he would never trade his personal strong suit for an ability as common as accurate spelling.

I guess my point is this: it's easy to sound intelligent on the board by writing eloquently and whatnot-- but what really matters is the content. In the OP's case, I think the question was thought-provoking and valid-- so let us forgive him of his minor spelling mistake and make the best out of this thread-- it seems to have a lot of potential for interesting discussion. :)
 
I do not exactly hide my use of psychedelics, but don't advertise it either. There are the inevitable curious questions from friends and aquaintances and the odd heated discussion about psychedelics and their merits.

Over the years I have introduced a few people to psychedelics. When I discovered them I first had the urge to proselytize, but got very cautious over time. I'd never urge or persuade someone to try psychedelics. If people come to me and say: "I kicked this around in my head some time, I wanna try it" or some similar line, that's a different thing. The best analogy to my attitude would be the prime directive from star treck. Don't interfere.

When I read the OP I thought instantly that, shamanistic societies had rules, taboos, rituals around the use of psychedelics, which we lack. All we have is hedonistic indulgence and drug piggery, so turning on the masses would probably not be a good thing. Adding to that, consumerist capitalism produces many many instable and essentialy broken individuals who would have difficulty handling that type of experience.

On the other hand, maybe I'm an elitist snob. Kesey's acid tests are after all a series of hilarious and anarchic experiments who serve to prove my initial thought wrong.
 
I wouldn't want doctors prescribing some Pfizer produced tryptamine to invoke a sense of meaning in a patience life...doesn't feel right.

I agree with the "dont interfere" idea agnetha, psychedelics have done me lots of good and lots of bad. I really don't feel like it should be any one persons responsibility to decide who get's to experience and who doesn't, or even persuade.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top