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Is there something to psychedelics?

I don't believe in anything supernatural because I believe if it exists within the world, it's natural, and there should be evidence.
I've heard Joe Rogans podcast, and it has me deeply curious as to whether it's possible at all that there is an entity trying to communicate to us through dmt, psilocybin, ayawasca and etc. People have come out of these experiences testifying to the same rationale, so there's objective verification right there. I've never tried these substances, but I consider myself spiritual and atheist. So I'm wondering, is there something to the claim that these substances could be a mode of communication

Phyphrus 5 Mar 8
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It's Joe Rogan...

There is no evidence to support any entity communicates with us while we're high. He must have watched Sausage Party. (that's actually a great, skeptical, anti-religion comedy, btw)

FWIW, I am a huge proponent of psychedelics. They are super interesting and may have benefit to mood and stability. But I don't think they are magical.

Also, one thing to watch out for in particular, LSD has an amazing ability to give the user the sensation of having an epiphany. It's rarely true. Usually you just really believe something stupid and you can dismiss later when you're not high.

Psychedelic amphetamines, like MDMA, offer some kind of emotional buffering, while maintaining a pretty sharp analytical mind. I would describe it as an "emotional out-of-body experience." You can think about very painful things without being overwhelmed, kind of like you're picking through the memories of another person. It's very hard to explain.

They're also an extraordinarily pleasant sensation. Especially how your sense of self-position is altered and how differently you experience sensations of motion because of that. Touch is altered in a magnificent way, as well.

They would seem useful in getting through almost any grieving process. The experience suggests that strongly. The clinical data is far too thin to be definitive, due to its scheduling making it near impossible to legally experiment. This lack of research is improving today, and what data we have seems to confirm.

I am using grieving very widely, not just as a reaction to a loss of something/someone dear, but very similar things go on in getting over tramatic experiences in general. It's unfortunate how frequently women lack the same kind of support after being raped, for example, as losing a spouse to cancer. But it's entirely appropriate. Anyway, I expect that someday MDMA will routinely be used by therapists with their patients in the office. Well, used by the patients, but you know what I mean. When you can approach a painful memory and remain rational and not be overwhelmed, that is a pretty powerful thing.

YOU are an “entity”. And you definitely communicate with yourself when you are DUI (Doing Under the Influence!)

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I am as lucid as a cuckoo, I say that because the cuckoo bird supposedly uses a lot more of its brain than other animals do. I can write some intense poems and I am drug free and have not touched alcohol in well over 7 years. So from personal experience, I think drug use is a pissy excuse and people just use it to escape normalcy because they fear living.

So when you fall ill, you don’t take any medications?

@Ungod I have not been ill in some time can't remember the last time even.

Well, I suggest you prepare for the inevitable!

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Shamanism, or the use of altered states for healing, visioning, and inspiration, is the oldest form of religious practice on earth. Shamanism includes, but is not limited to, the use of mind-altering substances to produce those altered states. Those substances, mostly plants, are the prototypes for what you are referring to as psychedelics.

Most shamans use religious or spiritual explanations for the experiences that they have. This is not too surprising; various researchers have concluded that in early human culture, spirituality was completely imbedded in human existence. It was literally not possible to stand outside of one's culture and declare that visits from ancestors, spirits, aliens or whatever were actually neurological phenomena with rational, non-spiritual explanations. Nowadays such explanations are possible, of course, and are put forth increasingly by brain researchers, anthropologists, and others, but the shamans themselves, who are naturally invested in their own world view, are as unlikely to accept these explanations as any other true believer would be likely to accept an alternative explanation for their rigidly held religious belief.

The Walter Pahnke experiment at Harvard Divinity School showed that if you give a psychedelic drug in a spiritual environment to spiritually-disposed individuals, the vast majority of them are going to have a spiritual experience that reinforces their most firmly held spiritual convictions.
Likewise, people who have near-death experience, and live to tell about it, report visions that are consistent with their own histories, beliefs and cultural backgrounds. Christians see Jesus and the angels waiting for them; Muslims see Mohammed or Allah, and many who mourn dead relatives see their loved ones with open arms. Researchers who studied the mental health of Brazilian Santo Diame practitioners (who drink ayahuasca once a month) reported that long term users have fewer visions over time, but continue to be affirmed in their beliefs and practices.

The altered states that psychedelics (I prefer the term entheogens) produce do have beneficial potential for some users. In a controlled environment, entheogens can help PTSD sufferers, for example, to move past their trauma, into a place of acceptance and healing. I believe that this happens because of neurological phenomena, as yet poorly understood, that allow the brain to review past histories and choices with a new set of perspectives. This new set of perspectives can sometimes lead to drastic changes in the person's life. I do NOT believe that altered states of conscious open doors to alien universes and alternate realities. But if you can believe that, maybe you can visit those places in your altered state.

Well said. I look at questions like this and ask myself which answer fulfills the requirements of Occham's Razor?

@JimG I agree actually. I'm just not willing to write it off. It's unlikely from my view, but with our limited understanding of consciousness, the mind wonders.

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I don’t know, but there’s something to WEED !!

Ungod Level 6 Mar 8, 2018

I am sure it does wonders for your imagination...🙂

If you think that’s all, or not vitally important, you are at a loss as to, as well as ignorant of, the importance of weed AND imagination!

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it's dreaming while you're awake. a diabetic on a sugar crash has much the same happen [ when referring to a bad trip on acid]

Hardly...

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I've tried them. They seem the change a bunch of things in your head. Some parts of your personality become more intense. It gives you the opportunity to see yourself in a different light, assuming you are an introspective person. I don't think the insights you get are unobtainable by other means. But it can be a tool. It can be fun too. But people should be carful of course.

JeffB Level 6 Mar 8, 2018
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I just remember laughing my ass off for several hours. It was like a mind enema for me. It cleaned out all the shit. Great times!

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We don't use all of our brain and I believe drugs open up passageways in the mind. watch the film lucy.

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I would say yes. But it would be communication with our own minds. If you are seeking communication with some entity, You may feel you have found it. It will likely fit your expectations of it. Its reality is in the experience and what you can walk away from it with, Not actual contact with anyone.

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I don't believe it's a form of communication, but maybe a way to see the code or makeup and interconnection of all things.

I do believe everyone should try to alter their reality through psychedelics at least once in their lifetime.
If for no other reason than to understand how fragile their realities are.

Perspective guides us through all of our life's decisions and psychedelics let you take a step to the side and see things though a different lens.

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I think we're just scratching the surface of what's to be learned about the mind and consciousness. After reading "Waking Up" by Sam Harris, I would like to try. MDMA in the company of someone I trust. [samharris.org]

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People testifying to something doesn't necessarily make it so. Certain drugs like LSD, mescaline, et al, that are considered hallucinogens alter mind chemistry, and our perception of the world around us, typically by intensification, and some distortion.

To read an interesting account, by a very articulate person, of a mind's workings while on mescaline, check out Aldous Huxley's DOORS OF PERCEPTION (it's the source from where the group THE DOORS got their name).

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I have ample experience with LSD, Mescaline, and Mushrooms, and at least 50 pounds of pot, and and a few OZ's of opium. In my experience the psychedelics do have an evect that seems unworldly. Your mind is connected to answers that would take many sessions with talk theraphy. I have had ESP experiences under the influence.

It is not for everone, but it has it's place.

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Dropped a boatload of psychedelics like strawberry acid, LSD25, chocolate mesc, white microdot (bad trip), woodrose, window pane and psilocybin from '69 to '78 or so, and don't recall really coming away with any monumental self-realizations or epiphemies. No conversations with otherworldly beings or shape-shifting spirits...but had a ton of laughs and saw some fantastic colors! Trails from sparklers at night are still burned into my retina.

The organic mescalines, mushrooms and psilocybins were the nicest trips...always waking up with a sore face from laughing. The acids usually had strychnine laced in the mix and were tough on the gut when you first came on to them. There is nothing quite like having to take a dump when your guts are in a knot and the room is melting.

When we had three hits of something but there were 4 of us...we made electric beer. One intense trip I spent the evening sitting in a plastic chair with no legs, watching my buddy play air broom to James Brown's 'Get On The Good Foot'. We mis-dosed with orange sunshine one time. Saw the dealer guy at the park two days later after no sleep. He saw the shape we were in and said 'uh, you know those were four-way hits, right'? Um no...no we didn't. But we heard road signs speaking to us.

If I were to seek out a psychoactive drug to take at this stage of life, it would be MDMA because of the way it makes you feel about others. Plus you can dose yourself to where you don't have a 12+ hour comittment. Had a gas with it during the rave scene in San Fran in the 90's.

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As one who came of age in the 70s and took a lot of stupid risks, let me assure you that hallucinogens are not the means to any sort of spiritual enlightenment.

Deb57 Level 8 Mar 24, 2018
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I've taken magic mushrooms before though it was many years ago. I think it's hard for anyone to not feel that they are having a mystical experience while under the influence of them, but I don't know how much to ascribe to that afterwards. One interesting Theory I heard in an anthropology class, is that in pre-literate hunting and Gathering societies what we would refer to as hallucinations or visions are actually a different form of software for the brain a different way of accessing information. In that sense you could say that preliterate peoples lived in a world that seem to them much more magical than the world seems two people living in a technological Society and a literate way of accessing information. Related to this was the idea that hallucinogenic drugs could provide a more modern for lack of a better word mind with access to this form of perceptionat. I'm pretty sure that the original idea was articulated better than I have explained it here but I still think it's an interesting concept.

Source:

Personal experience with magic mushrooms and an anthropology class I took at Kansas University sometime in the late 70s

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