I’m not so sure I actually know who this person is, but somehow I got a letter from the author of the new cover article in Baltimore’s own rag, the City Paper. The article is about that study at Johns Hopkins - which happened quite some time ago, if I’m not mistaken - where they gave psilocybin to what appears to be a bunch of middle aged people who missed out on taking drugs earlier in their life: and surprise! participants reported having mystical experiences. While it’s cool that mainstream science and academia are getting (back) on board this train, it’s certainly nothing new. Scientists like Timothy Leary were doing research like this back in the 1950’s before they got shut down.
Anyway, the article itself is not that interesting if you’ve read a lot of drug literature. Nothing especially remarkable about it, except for these two quotes which I wanted to lambast a little bit because, well, I think they are just wrong:
“I fantasize about an interdisciplinary research and retreat center, where people interested in having this experience could be medically screened and psychologically prepared for it,” he says. He leans back in his chair, folding his hands. “I use the metaphor or driving a car. Some people should never drive–the blind, epileptic, or of poor intelligence. If your only familiarity with driving a motor vehicle was from working in an emergency room, you’d probably argue that automobiles should be banned. It’s the same with these compounds–people need to be screened and prepared, just like getting a driver’s license.”
While I more or less support this guy’s research who’s making this quote, this line of thinking makes me a bit annoyed because what he’s describing is essentially a priesthood. If Nature thought you needed special training, preparation and a degree to ingest these substances, she would not have made them grow in piles of shit after it rains where anybody and everybody can get to it. The “great” thing about naturally-occurring drugs is that they have no such constraints or requirements as this guy is suggesting. They are free and egalitarian, open to anybody. You don’t and shouldn’t need some stupid license from some governing body who’s going to set regulations on who can and who cannot experience the wondrous bounty of God’s creation.
This one also gets me:
Griffiths concedes that the unpleasant reactions bother him. “We optimized subject selection, preparation, and support,” he says. “And yet 30 percent of our folks said that it was an extraordinarily fearful experience. We don’t know how to eliminate that, or if it can be eliminated. It’s a mystery.”
It’s actually *not* a mystery. Not at all. There is no secret or hocus pocus to it. These drugs open the floodgates of the soul: everything you’ve been holding back from your immediate awareness suddenly deluges your perceptual environment. If you’ve been holding back a bunch of nasty unresolved emotional garbage, then you’re going to experience that very concretely and directly. And yet, it’s not something you want to avoid. If you spend your daily life avoiding confronting things you find difficult, you should use the psychedelic experience as a chance to turn that all around. That’s what it’s for: it’s a free pass. By actively exploring this fear and what you experience in these “bad trips” you can begin to break them down and release the creative energy which has been locked up in these forms. And you’ll be completely transformed by it, and you don’t even need a license or a degree or anything. Just go out and find a pile of shit and dig in.
- END -
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11 Comments
Well, I don’t know….
Traditionally there have been Shamans and Mystery Schools guiding people in these things.
Is nature really all that egalitarian? What if the idea of there being shamans and spiritual traditions was part of the plan? A lot of times we think of indigenous people as being more egalitarian than they really are. Within their own traditions they are usually conservative and respect elders and traditional wisdom.
Not that Government oversight is the answer. That is stupid.
But uhhh…My feeling is restraint and support and guidence is better with this stuff.
Plus working willy nilly and alone as a dabbler…you can have a lot of these experiences without drugs. The learning curve is tempered by how serious and dedicated you are too. Its hard to get in over your head and unprepared without drugs.
For example, I would use myself. I have barely taken any drugs. Pot maybe 4 times in my life. Salvia Divinorium, one time at a low dose.
Not saying I am this amazing mystic or anything, but I’ve had my share of visions and communications with the spirit world. Nothing I have read of people sharing their drug induced visions of Ayahuasca, LSD etc. seems implausible or really all that unfamiliar to me in light of my own experiences.
If you are at all open to this stuff its there all the time with the volume turned way down. Even if you are a materialist, this stuff is there. So if you want to follow this line of inquiry all you need to do is turn the volume up, or learn how to turn the volume of everything else way down by being quiet and still.
To me this is better than being bombarded. Because you are in control. All you have to do is is start doing some time wasting activity, call a frieind, watch a stupid t.v. show, etc. if your visions get a little intense, the introspection gets a little scary, and suddenly its all gone. Back to the mundane world.
But if you are really into this journey, mediating for a while, taking notes, reading books, establishing rapport with your inner guides…. Maybe a drug can improve the proccess. Or maybe drugs are good for people that are practically atheists to be opened up to this stuff.
But to me drugs are a crutch. Also why reinvent the wheel? Sure some caveman needed to “discover” this stuff and expiriment, but that was 10,000-40,000 years ago.
In terms of egalitarianism, some people have been put on this Earth to spiritually teach others, I would find them.
That’s my take on it anyway.
My first response got lost…It was something about Govt. Oversight isn’t the answer but Shamanic traditions aren’t totally egalitarian either.
You don’t have to be a shaman to take drugs. And conversely, taking drugs doesn’t make you a shaman either. The answers to these things lie in the human nervous system, not anywhere else.
Not sure what you mean. Everything you just said above is a factually true statement. But I am arguing with this idea of DIY totally egalitarian psychadelic drug expirimentation. I don’t think the fact that these things grow on the ground means nature is egalitarian. Most social animals don’t even have the right to mate. You could say that social animals compete to mate, but the competition is so ritualized that its more like the animals decide amongst themselves who should represent the species through mating.
I just think there should be the context of a spiritual tradition behind this. With Someone playing the role of a Shaman guiding others through the process.
The reason is because these plants and fungus are actually elected by God to teach people about immortality and there are people elected by God to do the same thing. They work together.
If Nature required a shaman to guide you through the psychedelic process, then they would have built-in shamans within the mushrooms themselves. Fortunately, that’s exactly the case. No external tradition is required. It may be helpful, but it may also not be. You’ll learn what you have to learn whether you like it or not. No priesthood required.
“Most social animals don’t even have the right to mate.”
I think that in a tribal society the shaman winds up reflecting/serving the political culture that develops.
“these plants and fungus are actually elected by God to teach people about immortality”
But, God has the final say about who touches real “enlightenment” and scatters the means around without regard to politics.
You two always appear to be arguing when you’re really in close agreement with each other.
Well, all I am saying is that the more I study this stuff the more I think the design of the Universe involves teachers and authority figures. Its just that things get out of whack and the wrong people get in charge. But I used to think that means anarchy is better but I have my doubts now.
I mean sure if you want to encourage people to go out and start sampling wild mushrooms on their own, fine.
Sure some people are smart and will read up on it. But for example I was all into this rewilding kick once and spent a week out in the woods and came across these white mushrooms and I was thinking of eating them. I figured the poisonous ones would be brightly colored. I was just going on kind of a half assed knowledge of nature how poisonous insects are often brightly colored.
But anyway, long story short, I decided not to eat them. Later I bought a feild guide and found out that the two most poisonous mushrooms were growing in that same area The deathcap and the destroying angel. both white and innocent looking.
So my point is that sure government agencies being in charge of things sucks. Just look at the DMV but that doesn’t mean there is no need for leadership and guidence.
Being poisoned and dying are egalitarian too. My point is anyone can do it, nothing is required. I agree that leadership is important because we are pack/social animals who follow one another’s example, but I don’t see leaders as being divinely appointed or elected.
Well, there is our disagreement, then. I think there are divinely appointed leaders. I don’t think they have to be really blatant about it. You know like going around telling everyone they are appointed by God to lead.
It even seems like Jesus didn’t toot his own horn like that.
This is my impression from the Bagavahd Gita. I know you are into Taoism, you might get a lot out of it. Has a similar flavor. My favorite translation is called
“A walk through for Westerners” I forget the name of the transpator.
But anyway People aren’t simply animals. There is a lot more to us than that. It has to do with geometry and the design of the Universe. But leaders are part of the design.
The Gita is amazing. Do your duty. If your duty is to tell people to do mushrooms, do that. If it’s to do the opposite, do the opposite.
To pull a thread in from your other comments though:
This could be applied as a description of what a shaman does: they are a programmer who gives another person a framework for inner perceptual experiences. This is fairly profound. It is a completely neutral thing which can be taken in any direction: programming. My point about psychedelics is that they open up the possibilities of undoing these programs altogether in a spontaneous not even animalistic way, something totally pre-animal, something alien to our way of existing and perceiving. The spirit of the entity itself leads. It may not lead you into good directions as well, because its goals and needs are quite alien to that of a droplet of consciousness stored temporarily in a human body.
I don’t think so. I believe that any one at any time has the potential to lead through the choices they make. Their commitment to their beliefs and the lifestyle and behavior which flow naturally from that is what makes them a leader. God may smile on it, but God always smiles when a flower blooms in the desert.
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[...] Great article by Michael Hughes, the same guy who wrote the piece on the Hopkins mushroom study, about the epic folly of Baltimore police in breaking up a peaceful gathering with excessive force. An excerpt from Hughes’ article: My brother came running up the sidewalk. “Some guy just got tasered!” he said. I saw some cops walking back toward us, so I crossed the street to stay out of their way. The first arrestees were being led to the paddy wagon. I pulled out my cell phone and started snapping pictures. [...]