Here are my thoughts almost 10 years on (which was when I started; last time using a psychedelic was 6 years ago):
- Psychedelic experiences are still remembered as some of the more interesting ones in my lifetime.
- Psychedelics are invaluable not for the "insights" that you experience during a trip, but for revealing the unlikeliness and lack of utility that actual real life "insights" on a day to day basis may have. They allow you to take apart your brain and see how they're working piece by piece. Too often humans like to point a finger one way or the other; psychedelics teach you about the personal responsibility you have in the construction of your own reality.
- They have additional value in teaching one to deal with strong emotions and to work through painful experiences in ways that are healthy, beyond the duration of the experience.
- They appear to eventually cause some spiritual experiences in most users.
- Psychedelics are rarely associated with long term psychosis, of which the etiology is not really known or understood well.
Psychedelics are not:
- Your doorway to another dimension.
- Your key to determining "who you really are" beyond that "who you really are" is kind of meaningless and changes a lot.
- A pathway to enlightenment.
- A surefire cure for sociopathy, mental disorders, unhappiness.
- Entirely predictable in effect.
The end of the day message for me was that psychedelics are tools for understanding the way your brain works and seeing what happens when you subject it to some truly strange chemistry; they build human character and compassion similar to any other harrowing, adventurous experience. Most of the mythoi surrounding psychedelics I would guess are a product of counterculture. This was an unnecessary transformation caused by the removal of science from psychedelic drug investigation by the law, leaving only non-scientists to interpret the effects of the drugs.
Reading back on this thread and find this post very thought provoking.
As someone who is somewhat aimless, young and still finding who I am as Never Knows Best put it, and also as someone who did spend a large amount of time focussing solely on psychedelic mythos and what not and neglecting "The mundane plane" so to speak, I guess I fall into the category of that side of counter culture but recently have seen a different side of it that contradicts the idealised notions I had in my mind, fresh onto the psychedelic scene.
I'm not quite sure what my point is here but I guess it's that I wouldn't necessarily call it delusion, as you put it yourself psychedelics aid to teach us how we are responsible for creating our own realities, but in retrospect being 21 in a few days and having started using psychedelics relatively heavily from around 17 - 18, I think it's definitely wise to have some solid, well-informed grounding in reality before you set on down the yellow brick road of psychedelia.
I didn't and it led me through a year or two of deep confusion, at mystical and eventually practical insight. What I've learned after going through two massive shifts in attitude over the last 5 years, is that it is most definitely all about how you frame it.
How you interpret things, not what they are. That being said I've always been fascinated by people who think very scientifically and logically, I tend to think more metaphorically and emotionally, and have gotten much insight from other logical thinking friends of mine, who also happen to be psychedelic users.
Total side track here, but one thing I suggest for an interesting conversation amongst somewhat intelligent friends is discussing, and attempting to explain how one uses their imagination, minds eye or whatever to actually think about what it going on around them. In other words what is the specific nature of your consciousness to interpret things in real time. We found we all think in totally different ways, had difficulty describing the phenomenon and that some of us thought in pictures, some in audio, some in combinations of various elements with on or the other being more pervasive. Interestingly enough those of us also who tend to think visually in nature, tended to experience more extreme visual distortions and effects from psychedelics, and drugs in general at lower doses.
Anyway so much rant here now, the point is, it's all in your perspective, oh yeah and I wish we could legally study these chemicals in disgusting detail so I could put my autistic brain at rest about the ceaseless wonders of this whole existence mess.
) But I remember growing up in the late 70's and early 80's just tripping thousands of times. There were periods of experimentation where one day it would be one dose, the next day two, the next four and then the next day eight. The only complications from that was boredom from it not being special anymore and acting normal on it. The word drug makes people who are not knowledgable think of being drugged as stupid, dumb, can't think, and just plain dopey. That is not psychedelics.
