Mushrooms and Science

[SHRED]

The psilocybin joyriders claimed the experience included such feelings as "a sense of pure awareness and a merging with ultimate reality, a transcendence of time and space, a feeling of sacredness or awe, and deeply felt positive mood like joy, peace and love." What's more, for a majority of users, the experience was "impossible to put into words."

It doesn't stop there. Two months later, 24 of the participants (out of a total of 36) filled out a questionnaire. Two-thirds called their reaction to psilocybin "one of the five top most meaningful experiences of their lives. On another measure, one-third called it the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, with another 40 percent ranking it in the top five. About 80 percent said that because of the psilocybin experience, they still had a sense of well-being or life satisfaction that was raised either 'moderately' or 'very much.'"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/08/04/notes080406.DTL


Johns Hopkins University:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/07/10/national/a213221D59.DTL

[Beer Snob-50]

1. being a mushroom user in my youth...

i would say that it basically gave me a feeling of happiness and then a massive case of horniness.

[Glorfindel]

2. No kidding! I know several people who could have told them that...

for free, no capital outlay required. :hippie:

[opihimoimoi]

3. We should be using mushroom spores in our bombs....make those peeps high

[greyl]

4. Experiments show that when spiders are fed LSD,

they don't wander around doing purposeless things, they instead spin an abnormally perfect symmetrical web. This according to Robert Pirsig's Lila, in which he argues the point that American(USA) opposition to indigenous American's peyote use illustrates the battle between Democracy and personal freedom, as well as being an example of religious persecution of a minority, something which isn't supposed to happen in this country.
The point of view of the Native American Church is that peyote is a de-hallucinogen because it removes the hallucinations of contemporary life and reveals the reality buried beneath them.
Interesting topic.

[GaYellowDawg]

27. And here's what happens to flies on marijuana...

Turn your sound on.

Flies on marijuana

[mom cat]

5. Kickity kickity kick!

[Running Amok]

6. Isn't this just what Timothy Leary was saying?

no text

[newyawker99]

31. Hi Running Amok!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Joanne98]

7. A good way to stop wars. That's why it will never be legal.

[madokie]

24. Stop wars, what a novel idea

I am all for it,

[madokie]

8. == God Is In The Magic Mushrooms = by Mark Morford

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/08/04/notes080406.DTL&nl=fix

Hide the children. Pour some absinthe, fluff the pillows, take off your pants. It is time.

Because now we know: Getting nicely and wholly high on illegal but completely natural hallucinogenic drugs might, just might open some sort of profound psychological doorway or serve as some sort of giddy terrifying rocket ride to higher state of consciousness, happiness, a sense of inner peace and love and perspective and a big, fat lick from the divine.

It's true. There's even a swell new study from Johns Hopkins University that officially suggests what shamans and gurus and botany Ph.D.s and alt-spirituality types have known since the dawn of time and Jimi Hendrix's consciousness: That psilocybin, the all-natural chemical found in certain strains of wild mushrooms, induces a surprisingly large percentage of users to experience a profound -- and in some cases, largely permanent -- revolution in their spiritual attitudes and perspectives.

Not only that, but the stuff reportedly made a majority of testers feel so much more compassionate, open-hearted, connected to and awestruck by the world and the universe and God that it ranks right up there with the most profound and unfathomable experiences of their lives. I know. Stop the presses.

[IndependentVoice]

9. someone should let georgie hit that

[hobbit709]

10. Yep

I keep saying there's nothing wrong with this country that 300 million hits of good acid wouldn't cure.

[Atman]

11. That's how I felt about LSD

I never took 'shrooms, though. Something about digging my buzz out of a pile of cow shit just killed the high before it even started.

[hobbit709]

13. They grow on top

and the piles are pretty dry by then. What's bad is fresh green raw peyote.

[madokie]

14. only one time for the peyote buttons for me. Oh but good

went to see blazing saddles when it first came out, i've never laughed so hard in my life. The 'shrooms, on the other hand, so good so fun, back then.

[HongKonger]

23. They don't always grow on top of shit

Not in the Pacific Northwest - which has the widest array of hallucigenic mushrooms in the world. They grown in all kinds of conditions.

[Sequoia]

32. Some interesting books you all might like:

Those mushrooms in the northwest hide from you at first according to Andrew Weil in his wonderful little book:

other cool things: looking at a solar eclispe, eating mangos and more.


and

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0553371304.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Seriously, you'll like them both.

[tenshi816]

22. I liked 'em both.

Used to bug me with acid, though, that every time I had a grand epiphany and discovered the secret of the universe, I'd get distracted by something else (like Gilligan's Island reruns or similar) and later on forget my astounding insight.

The only thing I hated about mushrooms was that they tasted so damn bad.

Edited to add that I saw a program once that said the "manna from heaven" in the Bible referred to magic mushrooms. I'll have to see if I can find the name of the documentary.

[Atman]

29. I remember everything from when I tripped.

It was amazing. The clarity of vision they talk about, everything that happened on the few times I dropped are etched in my brain like they happened yesterday. It is really amazing. I only did the stuff about six or seven times, and it was fan-freakin-tastic each time. But that was youthful indiscretion. I don't even drink anymore! (I couldn't remember anything on that shit!).

[TomClash]

12. White Rabbit au natural nt

[megatherium]

15. It was an interesting experience, but no profound spiritual realizations.

1.5 grams of dried psilocybin mushroom, provided to me by a friend who had cultured them (from spores brought from an ad in High Times magazine or somewhere). It's been 25 years since I had psychedelics (I tripped several times in college), haven't had any desire to revisit that. I feel like I get a lot more revelation out of a really good book.

[LiberalEsto]

18. Experiences vary

I felt the world around me as a living, breathing, interconnected web of energy. I enjoyed the amazing colorful cartoon show in my mind -- who knew my own brain concealed such wonders?

I also (while not high myself) watched my brother flip out and try to drown himself in a river, tried to distract him, tried to hold him back. It took 9 police officers and paramedics to strap him on a stretcher and take him to the hospital. He kept screaming and bellowing horribly. I swore off hallucinogens then and there.

Would I want to try again? Part of me would like to, some day, if I were in a safe place and a good state of mind, and knew the material was pure and in a carefully calibrated dosage.

[megatherium]

25. That's the key: mindset and setting. If you're in a safe place

mentally and physically, with someone to monitor you, you should be all right. They did carefully controlled experiments with thousands of people with LSD circa 1960 with essentially no problems.

I should mention I had a friend in college who became an acid casualty. He used a lot of LSD, I think it triggered schizophrenia. He took his own life several years later.

But even alcohol can be very destructive. In fact, I've seen more harm from that drug than psychedelics; I had a friend die of alcoholism (in his 30s) and I've seen it ruin friends' careers. (I am a light social drinker but I am very wary of alcohol.)

[DemoTex]

16. "Can we get some of this stuff into Dick Cheney's blood pudding?"

Or sprinkled on Rummy's morning bowl of black scorpions?

[peekaloo]

20. LOL! The breakfast of Chumpions!

[WinkyDink]

17. JHU needed a study? "The Sacred Mushroom

and the Cross", John Marco Allegro.
"Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy", by Clark Heinrich.
"Mushrooms and Mankind: The Impact of Mushrooms on Human Consciousness and Religion", by James Arthur.

[rodeodance]

19. I think he is saying that 'we" can find our 'inner" selves--not that God

is in the mushrooms.



.....we are, in fact, the divine we so desperately seek........

.......This is a clinical interpretation. The gorgeous experience itself means nothing except to say that normal life is terribly drab and crazy drugs temporarily scramble your brain in occasionally positive and interesting ways, but never the twain shall meet, so oh well let's go back to work.

But you can also take it one step further. You may conclude that the study underscores the harsh fact that we as a species are so divorced from deeper meaning, so detached from the mystical and the divine and the universal in our everyday instant-gratification lives, that it takes something like a powerful hallucinogen to show us just how meek and limited and far from merging with God we still very much are. This is the pessimistic view. And it is, by every estimate, a very primitive and sour place to be.

Ah, but then there's the third way. This is to suggest that it's exactly the other way around, that perhaps at least some of us are, as Leary and his cosmic cohorts have suggested for decades, just inches from the celestial doorway, already on the precipice of realizing that we are, in fact, the divine we so desperately seek. Problem is, we can't see the edge through the tremendous fog of consumerism and conservatism and quasi-religious muck.

But even so, every now and then we manage to take a tiny, unconscious, clumsy step ever closer to the edge, stumbling toward ecstasy without really knowing or understanding that we're doing so. And ultimately, sly entheogens like psilocybin are merely nature's way of clearing the fog for a moment, of letting us know just how close we are by smacking us upside the scientific head and tying our cosmic shoelaces together. And doesn't that sound like a fascinating way to spend the weekend?

[Phrogman]

21. Check out one of my favorite websites on this topic...

http://www.shroomery.org/

Go check out the "trip reports" forum, theres some very interesting reading there.

[madokie]

26. Thank you I just marked for future reference

Had a big ole pile of manure in the spare shower years ago, had many good parties too. Those were the days

[NoSheep]

28. This thread wouldn't be complete without mentioning Terrence

McKenna. I am pro-mushroom for anyone who wants them. The right to possess and use them should be inalienable and part of the protection of my freedom to pursue happiness.

[Atman]

30. I submitted this 'toon to High Times way back in 1980

"Toadstool - A Story"

They didn't buy it. Just as well. I probably would have just blown the money on weed.