Hallucinogens, Mental Health and Wisdom

[cthulu2016]

Chronic use of hallucinogenic drugs is probably not a reliable path to mental health but there are some profound things you can learn about your self—not about opening your third eye or the intricacies of the Mayan calendar or whether your cat is an angel, but about basic mental function.

What we think, what we see and even who we are is a function of activity in our nervous systems. One day you feel okay. Another day you feel like suicide is the best idea you've ever had. Perhaps you were fired or your marraige fell apart and there's a strong real-world reason to feel that way. But it's just chemicals in play.

That doesn't mean it isn't important. Our love for our children is just chemicals in play. The fact we haven't murdered the neighbors yet is just chemicals in play. Reductionsm doesn't trivialize human essence and experience. Being human is as important or unimportant as we think it is... we're the ones doing the thinking, after all.

But really getting that our moods and even our convictions are physical phenomena makes it easier to get a more objective view.

I may be sure of something at this moment, but knowing that a pill could make me sure of something entirely different puts it all in perspective. If a chemical can make you think something different then how certain is what you feel?

And for people whose brains are not always giving us the best advice or making us feel as good as we should feel, that recognition is valuable. Mood is changable. Convictions should be examined over time, in a variety of lights.

If a simple pill can mechanically, reliably, predictably and reproducably make us a different person then there is little reason to take our current mental state all that seriously.

That's a potent insight. This is just your brain doing something...

I don't know what use or abuse LSD offers psychiatry. We may never know, or not for a century. When it was first developed some psychiatrists udes it agressively... and in pure form.

Cary Grant (yes, that Cary Grant) may have taken more milligrams of LSD than Wavy Gravy. He was in LSD therapy for some time, back when it was legal, and says he found it beneficial.

[Webster Green]

1. Psychedelics could be a tremendous tool for therapy.

The early researchers saw the possibilities immediately. Unfortunately, psychedelics have been unfairly demonized by the government, so we won't know the value until we can change the puritanical attitudes of the powers that be.

Note: LSD doses are measured in micrograms, not milligrams. You would need to have eaten a shitload of acid to reach a total in the milligrams. Also, Wavy, Kesey, and the pranksters (and many more of us) were taking Owsley's acid, which was very pure.

[cthulu2016]

3. Point taken, re: purity

the early enthusiasts were not taking what most folks were taking by the late 1970s, which was relatively weak and almost invariably laced with speed.

(And when Jimi Hendrix would dose himself on stage with a liquid drop to the eye he was surely using something that the street-buyer seldom had access to.)

[Webster Green]

5. Yeah, I wonder if there's any real acid available anymore.

It's pretty risky biz to manufacture it these days.

I dosed a few years back with some friends in their 20s (I'm 65). They were thinking it was pretty cool until I felt that I had to reveal that we were most definitely NOT tripping on LSD. What a party pooper!

[saras]

2. The reason to take your mental state seriously is that it has consequences for other people...

...but I think that sensible use of psychedelics ultimately gives one more control over what to take how seriously, rather than automatically shifting us in a particular direction.

The quality of LSD, and other psychedelics, makes a VAST difference. People who worked with good stuff report tens of thousands of trips with very few bad trips and pretty much no permanent or disabling ones. People who use lots of street drugs get really strange brain damage pretty quickly, sometimes spectacularly quickly. One of the great under-researched issues, as no one with money wants to know, or wants anyone else to know, except the best drug makers, who are hardly in a position to go so public.

When LSD was FIRST developed, the CIA was doing all kinds of wacky shit with it - including giving it to large numbers of psychiatrists, asking them merely to report back what happened. Everyone was surprised when people loved the stuff, AND when it vastly accelerated therapy for lots of people. The CIA had already given acid to lots of people (being the CIA, they were pretty much guaranteed bad trips), and they took a lot themselves. Really a lot. So they thought they knew about it. Boy, were THEY surprised. Because the new users were mostly upper-class, it spread really widely before it hit the public really hard. Time and Life were propagandizing FOR psychedelics, before they turned around. And then the sixties happened.

More info in Acid Dreams, by Martin Lee & Bruce Shlain as a pdf or check out the book at Amazon or a quick outline of the book from the authors

[TrogL]

4. "The fact we haven't murdered the neighbors yet" - hey, speak for yourself

I'm kidding. Hopefully.

Love the "yet".

Back in my worst crazy days, I knew I was sane when everybody around me was acting relatively sane.

I know I'm batshit. I don't need LSD to make it worse.

[cthulu2016]

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