psychoblast
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2000
- Messages
- 3,693
As an educated man with frankly too much psychedelic experience, including most of the decent RC's that have hit the scene in the last decade, I am a strong supporter of MAPS. That said, perhaps the biggest threat I see from a more widespread usage of psychedelics is the risk of self-inflicted PTSD. This raises an issue that has philosophical, psychological and medical ramifications.
I have danced with LSD many times without having that ultimate "bad trip" that others have told me about, the one that caused them to swear off of psychedelics forever. Then one day, down a K-hole, I found my own vision of hell that I would not wish on my worst enemy. It snuck upon me in the worst way -- as insight. Insight into the objective meaninglessness of relationships which I hold priceless. It was very much akin to being in the lowest dregs of dreamstate visualized in that movie "inception," alone and hopeless in an infinite, dark and lonely place that is, in fact, your own life with all meaning leeched out of it. And there you are, in your body, in your life, forced to carrry on living with this sense of ultimate pointlessness, hopelessness, etc.
Well, it's hard to evoke exactly what that place was, but it was very intense, very bad, about as "horrific" has anything could be. Fortunately, ketamine does not last that long, and I soon emerged from that place, though it felt like I was there for far too long. The experience was not bad enough to have me write off drugs, or even ketamine. And I wound up returning to that place, that despair, more than once. I fnally kicked ketamine with the help of mxe (good because my kidneys were starting to hurt), but the mxe has taken me to that same place, through a back door, on one very dark occasion.
If I go on this way, this will surely be moved to the Dark Side. (Maybe it will anyway.) But let me get to the point, and wrap up. In my professional life, I have come into contact with people diagnosed with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. And i have become learned on the criteria for this disorder. An event, or series of events, outside normal human experience, that creates a sense of threat to your body or your sense of self. Something like that. A woman suffering a sexual assault can have PTSD. A soldier after a battle can have PTSD. Being sexually vioated, and being in a life-or-death fight are deemed "outside normal human experience."
I could muster a chuckle here. The psychedelics I've tried, those mostly beneficent, are essentially chosen for their ability to take me outside normal human experience. Now all you have to do is add a serious threat, which is pretty much inevitable if you do psychedelics enough, and you've got the exact recipe for PTSD. So, eventually, it seems like most psychonauts will have bad trips that lead to some form of PTSD.
Then you feel like you're some vet come back from 'Nam, but you actually have no such excuse, because unlike the assault victim or the soldier, you basically did this to yourself without any help. Does that shorten the recovery curve, that it did not "really" happen? Or does that make it even worse?
Anyway, as long as we have MAPS people researching the pros of psychedelics, I think some thought should be given to the adverse, psychological ramifications. Also, I think some sociologists ought to pay attention to the fact that there is a huge underbelly of society that has recklessly used psychedelics as a 'coming of age' rite, which generally ends when you have that bad trip that meets all the criteria for a PTSD-inducing event, and then you just suck it up, maybe write off drugs, and go on with your life. I'm starting to wonder if everyone isn't suffering from some level of PTSD by a certain age.
I have danced with LSD many times without having that ultimate "bad trip" that others have told me about, the one that caused them to swear off of psychedelics forever. Then one day, down a K-hole, I found my own vision of hell that I would not wish on my worst enemy. It snuck upon me in the worst way -- as insight. Insight into the objective meaninglessness of relationships which I hold priceless. It was very much akin to being in the lowest dregs of dreamstate visualized in that movie "inception," alone and hopeless in an infinite, dark and lonely place that is, in fact, your own life with all meaning leeched out of it. And there you are, in your body, in your life, forced to carrry on living with this sense of ultimate pointlessness, hopelessness, etc.
Well, it's hard to evoke exactly what that place was, but it was very intense, very bad, about as "horrific" has anything could be. Fortunately, ketamine does not last that long, and I soon emerged from that place, though it felt like I was there for far too long. The experience was not bad enough to have me write off drugs, or even ketamine. And I wound up returning to that place, that despair, more than once. I fnally kicked ketamine with the help of mxe (good because my kidneys were starting to hurt), but the mxe has taken me to that same place, through a back door, on one very dark occasion.
If I go on this way, this will surely be moved to the Dark Side. (Maybe it will anyway.) But let me get to the point, and wrap up. In my professional life, I have come into contact with people diagnosed with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. And i have become learned on the criteria for this disorder. An event, or series of events, outside normal human experience, that creates a sense of threat to your body or your sense of self. Something like that. A woman suffering a sexual assault can have PTSD. A soldier after a battle can have PTSD. Being sexually vioated, and being in a life-or-death fight are deemed "outside normal human experience."
I could muster a chuckle here. The psychedelics I've tried, those mostly beneficent, are essentially chosen for their ability to take me outside normal human experience. Now all you have to do is add a serious threat, which is pretty much inevitable if you do psychedelics enough, and you've got the exact recipe for PTSD. So, eventually, it seems like most psychonauts will have bad trips that lead to some form of PTSD.
Then you feel like you're some vet come back from 'Nam, but you actually have no such excuse, because unlike the assault victim or the soldier, you basically did this to yourself without any help. Does that shorten the recovery curve, that it did not "really" happen? Or does that make it even worse?
Anyway, as long as we have MAPS people researching the pros of psychedelics, I think some thought should be given to the adverse, psychological ramifications. Also, I think some sociologists ought to pay attention to the fact that there is a huge underbelly of society that has recklessly used psychedelics as a 'coming of age' rite, which generally ends when you have that bad trip that meets all the criteria for a PTSD-inducing event, and then you just suck it up, maybe write off drugs, and go on with your life. I'm starting to wonder if everyone isn't suffering from some level of PTSD by a certain age.
