*** Psychedelics *** The use of psychedelics from plant sources was the beginning of humankind's deep spirtual awareness. The suppression of the use of these psychedelics by governments and organized religion is one of the great crimes against humanity. And it continues to this day in the so-called "War on Drugs", which is in part an attempt to prevent people from realizing that what they're told by politicians and the mainstream media consists mostly of lies and that the real source of true understanding is the divinity within their own consciousness. But the prohibitionists will be defeated, and will be regarded with contempt by future generations.
There is a wealth of information built into us ... tucked away in the genetic material in every one of our cells ... without some means of access, there is no way even to begin to guess at the extent and quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world, and insights into its nature. — Alexander ShulginHow to do psychedelics? At night, alone, in darkness and silence. — Terence McKennaFirst a 1954 review of Huxley's The Doors of Perception.
Now a couple of reports of psychedelic experiences from the late 80s:
Now into the 90s:
- Report on an LSD Experience
"My experience ... was the realization that, literally, there is nothing. This seems to me now the most profound teaching of this particular acid trip: the revelation that there really is nothing. This is the plain, literal truth. Ultimately, beyond all phenomena, nothing exists. ... [In] my experience, very stoned, I looked into the heart of reality and found that, indeed, there is nothing. The whole universe in fact does not exist. It is pure collective hallucination."- Report on a Ketamine Experience
"I meditated on my life and my death, wondering how long I could go on. In some ways I felt immortal, although my rational mind held to the inevitability of physical death some day. I felt that the most (and it is a lot) that I could hope for would be to be there "at the end of the world", when Being falls back into the Primordial Nothingness. ... This is the Extinction of the Universe, an inevitable consequence of its Creation; it has happened many times and will happen many more. It is the Divine Beyond-Being being born and dying, and being reborn, again and again, each time with a new variation ..."
And this one from 2015:.
- Not in Kansas Anymore
This article originally appeared under the title "Mushroom with a View" in Unshaved Truths #3 (Autumn/Winter 1992), edited by Jon Lebkowsky. (Unshaved truths are the opposite of barefaced lies, which are commonly found in the mainstream media, such as the New York Times.) It was originally presented as fiction; this was itself a fiction, as any experienced reader would soon realize. The article was subsequently reprinted (under the original title) in Psychedelic Illuminations (#5, 1993), ed. Thomas Lyttle.
- Ayahuasca Report
This author recently spent several months in Peru, during which time he was looking for authentic shamans with whom to take ayahuasca and perhaps obtain a glimpse of the spiritual beings said to inhabit the world to which experienced shamans have access. ... [Unfortunately, these days, it seems,] it is very difficult to find a genuine legitimate and ethical curandero without sufficient time, Spanish proficiency, and considerable trans-cultural experience and skills.Nevertheles I managed to do ayahuasca sessions with three different Peruvian shamans, with not wholly pleasant results.
- Answers to DMT interview questions
In 1990, when Dr Rick Strassman was designing the questionnaire for use in his DMT experiment, he sent me some questions. I don't have the original questions, but they are implicit in the answers given. Previously unpublished.
- Apparent Communication with Discarnate Entities
Induced by Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)I began this article in September 1989. It went through several revisions, which were shown to numerous people who kindly offered suggestions for improvement. After extended work with the DMT pipe (see the "DMT Journal" below) it was completed in June 1992 and was published simultaneously at the end of that year in Psychedelic Monographs and Essays, Volume 6 (edited by Thomas Lyttle), and in Jahrbuch für Ethonomedizin und Bewußtseinsforschung (Yearbook for Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness) (edited by Christian Rätsch, Ph.D.). It was reprinted in Psychedelics (1994?) edited by Thomas Lyttle. The Psychedelic Monographs version, and parts of it, have been published at various places on the web. For this HTML version I have made some minor changes and have added a small amount of new material.
DMT crystal (2", 5 cm, high) - A DMT Journal
Notes I made "in the field" while researching the DMT article.
- Series A Sessions #1 through #16, July 1987 to April 1990.
- Series B Sessions #17 through #22, June & July 1990.
- Series C Sessions #23 through #35, November 1990 to March 1991.
- A Brief Conversation About DMT
- A Reply to Martin Ball's "Terence on DMT"
- Concerning the Nature of the DMT Entities and their Relation to Us
I suggest that before each of us humans became incarnate organisms in this natural world we were entities in the DMT World, and that during foetal development in the womb we made a transition from the DMT World to this world.
Now reports by other people. Most remark on the astonishing nature of the DMT experience, how no words can ever convey the quality of the experience to those who have not had it. It is, indeed, the weirdest thing you can experience this side of the grave. And, by the way, the experience immediately refutes all the basic assumptions of modern materialist Western science, as I say in Physicalism: A False View of the World.
For many accounts of experiences in the DMT space by a large group of people see 340 DMT Trip Reports (603 KB). The links below are to reports by individuals.
- Reports of Contact with Entities in the DMT Space
A series of reports of DMT-smoking experiments by a 40-year-old female researcher which resulted in definite contact with the entities. These reports mention a phenomenon, sometimes called "elf-dismemberment", where the entities are experienced as performing an operation of some kind upon the subject which may feel like dismemberment and recomposition. This phenomenon is often reported by persistent explorers and it is emerging as one of the "consistent features" to be encountered in the DMT world. Just what is actually happening during this process is, of course, anyone's guess.
- DMT Experience
I definitely felt I had been closer to the core of the real than ever before and that this mystery is front and center to who we are as humans ... I do feel it is a very important experience to have as a human being ...Some extracts from this article.
- Another DMT Experience [link expired]
At this point the glorious geometries transcended what is even vaguely feasible in this three dimensional mundane, constantly concrescing into new and variegated permutations, exfoliating out of themselves what might be called hyperspherologies of the divine, and to look anywhere was to be shot clean through with scintillating amazement. Crowding and cramming themselves into my field of vision were thousands upon thousands of beings of every imaginable sort and many that were completely unimaginable. They were everywhere jabbering in indecipherable tongues, juggling incandescent neon microworlds of dancing beings, and morphing with a zen-like, diaphanous fluidity that remains a primal miracle no matter how often you lay your all too human eyes on it. ... Seven minutes spent in that dimension, the primal furnace of our being, is enough for most people to think about for the rest of their lives.
- DMT, jottings found on a scrap of paper.
- Four Reports of DMT Journeys
A 31-year-old male here reports on his DMT experiences, and concludes (as others have noted) that the further you go the weirder it gets.
These beings just kept on grinning. They knew that I knew that this was the price paid to enter their 'special' world. They were very keen to show me their magic. I would try to look away but each time I tried, they would stop my breath and do some amazing transformational magic which I simply can't describe and was so amazing that I was prevented by awe from looking away. ... It was very beautiful and totally bizarre. It was as though the strength of magic taking place was way too much. Solid forms of colour and shape, way beyond the geometric forms. In your face. They kept on fanning out this magic like opening one of those decorated hand fans. They knew that this was the only place that I could experience it.
- Starchild: DMT Reality
There are absolutely no words that could possibly explain what I saw.
- Lawrence Bowen: First DMT trip
... an account of my first DMT trip, now an hour old, and I will never be the same again. I am in a state of complete and utter astonishment.
- Terence McKenna: The DMT Experience
What we experience in the presence of DMT is real news. It is a nearby dimension — frightening, transformative, and beyond our powers to imagine, and yet to be explored in the usual way. We must send fearless experts, whatever that may come to mean, to explore and to report on what they find.
- Reports of 5-MeO-DMT Experiences
The 5-MeO-DMT molecule is the DMT molecule with a methoxy (CH3-O-) group attached to the 5-position of the benzene ring. It is about five times as potent as DMT, and smoking 2 - 4 mg can produce significant effects. Jonathan Ott reports (in Pharmacotheon, p.169) that Alexander Shulgin found 5 - 10 mg of this material to be effective when injected parenterally or smoked. The main difference, subjectively, is that 5-MeO-DMT produces few visual effects (though some are reported). I have smoked it twice, and I find that the absence of significant visual effects means that there is little about the experience that I can recommend. Here is a report of three 5-MeO-DMT trips (and some further thoughts on the subject) by an 18-year-old male ("MAP"). He says that on his first trip he smoked 30 mg of 5-MeO-DMT, which is about six times the recommended amount, and found the effects highly impressive.
- Ayahuasca Analogues (copied from Ayahuasca Analogues, a page which has now disappeared).
- Two articles (in PDF format) by a former underground chemist writing under the pseudonym of "Infinite Ayes":
- Moving into the Sacred World of DMT (2,822 KB)
- Just a Wee Bit More about DMT (305 KB)
Dimethyltryptamine is unique and extremely powerful. If I were asked what its most important attribute was, I would have to say that it is the doorway to the intensely personal temple of our own sacredness. It opens the doorway to the vastness of the soul; this is at once our own personal soul, and its intrinsic connection to the universal soul. When the underlying unity of this fictional duality is seen and felt, one experiences a completeness and interconnection with all things. This experience, when we attain it, is extremely beautiful and good. It is a song that rings and reverberates through the lens of God. Now we know why we were born; to have this intense experience of the sacred, the joyous, the beauty, and the blessing of just being alive in the arms of God.
These PDF files are viewable with Acrobat Reader. "Moving Into the Sacred World of DMT" first appeared in Vol. X, No. 1, (Vernal Equinox) 2001 issue of The Entheogen Review, pp. 32-39. "Just a Wee Bit More About DMT" first appeared in Vol. X, No. 2 (Summer Solstice) 2001 issue of The Entheogen Review, pp. 51-56. Both articles are republished here with permission of Infinite Ayes (Nick Sand) and The Entheogen Review.
Ibogaine
Ibogaine is the active chemical [an alkaloid] found in the African Tabernanthe iboga root as well as several other plant species. It is a strong, long-lasting psychedelic used traditionally in a coming of age ritual [by the African Bwiti tribe] but also known for its modern use in treating opiate addiction. — Erowid Ibogaine VaultClick on this link for Nick Sand's article Journey into the Realm of Ibogaine, which appeared in the Vol. XI, No. 3 (Autumnal Equinox) 2002 issue of The Entheogen Review, pp. 98-100.
Amanita muscaria Mushroom
The great pioneering researcher in the field of ethnobotany and entheogenic plants, Gordon Wasson, was the first to suggest that the Vedic soma was the mushroom Amanita muscaria. In the 1970s John Allegro (in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross) claimed to show that early Christianity arose from the suppression of a secret practice of using Amanita muscaria for spiritual purposes (and that all statements about "Jesus" were actually disguised statements about the mushroom).
Adam and Eve and
the Tree of KnowledgeContemporary researchers, in particular, Carl Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples and Clark Heinrich, have confirmed Wasson's research and expanded upon it, providing evidence that this mushroom has played an important role not only in Indian religions but also in Judaism and Christianity (thus supporting John Allegro's findings) and in the alchemical tradition.
But the mere suggestion that the eating of a drug-containing fungus, and the psychedelic effects thereof, played a major role in the development of the world's religions is enough to send conventional thinkers into fits of hysterics. Eventually, however, the truth will become known, and the vacuity and the fraudulent character of conventional Christianity, and other religions based merely on faith (which is chosen belief, sometimes strongly-willed and often self-delusional), will become clear.
- From Clark Heinrich's Strange Fruit:
- Forbidden Knowledge — a review of The Apples of Apollo
- The Assassins, an extract from John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
Ketamine
PCP and ketamine are chemically similar, but have dissimilar psychic effects. And whereas PCP has a low margin for safety, ketamine seems quite safe when used judiciously (say, in one's own home). But because ketamine is a psychedelic and can have impressive (and impressively positive) effects on one's consciousness it too is demonized in the Drug War. A recent article in Time magazine was another shot in the propaganda war. Here is a reply to that article:
- A Reply to "Is Your Kid on K?"
- From Dr. Karl Jansen's Ketamine (K) and Quantum Psychiatry:
In the normal course of events, treatment involving psychedelic drugs would have eventually found its proper place, after the extravagant claims phase had passed, with the usual list of possible adverse effects, indications and contra-indications, cautions and precautions, advocates and opponents — as exist for all forms of treatment. Psychedelic drugs, however, became caught up in an intense ideological battle. The result was that not only did all therapeutic use come to an abrupt halt after 20 years, but almost all research projects were also suppressed. This did not happen because a serious new side-effect emerged, or because there was absolutely no evidence of efficacy. The complete ban on psychedelic drug research appears to have arisen from issues which are largely ideological. Ketamine provides an example of the processes involved. It has been given to millions of patients, and there are numerous reviews affirming its safety (when used in a controlled medical context) and value. In most countries it is not even a controlled drug. Nevertheless, if a research proposal is made involving 10% of the normal anaesthetic dose, to be given to healthy informed volunteers, and the word 'psychedelic' appears anywhere in the proposal, there is immediate and grave concern amongst ethical committees where anaesthetic trials may proceed with relative ease. It is difficult to explain this anomaly using scientific and health concerns. These anomalies have led to suggestions that this era has a taboo against having certain aspects of the mind revealed. Ketamine may provide an example of this taboo: a relatively safe medicine which is suddenly seen as unsafe because it is described as a psychedelic drug rather than a dissociative anesthetic.
- Extracts from Chapter 4 of Dr. Jansen's book Ketamine: Dreams and Realities
For a description of this book and information about ordering from MAPS see here.
- Ketamine References
Better Drugs / Worse Drugs
Speaking just of psychoactive drugs, there are better drugs and there are worse drugs. In a society in which drugs are widely used, and in which an informed public is considered a good thing, a distinction is made between benign and potentially harmful drugs, so as to inform the people and help them not to make mistakes when using drugs. In the U.S., and in those unfortunate societies where the ruling elite takes the U.S. as a model, all (unapproved) drug usage is demonized and labelled "abuse" (oh horror!), and no distinction is made between life-enhancing and potentially dangerous psychoactive drugs. All one hears from the government drug propaganda apparatus are such mindless statements as Nancy Reagan's "Drugs are simply appalling!".The truth of the matter is that some psychoactive drugs can help you to overcome the self-limiting conditioning that a mechanistic/materialistic society imposes upon its members, thus leading to a more authentic understanding of self and world, whereas other drugs, used unwisely, can lead to ruin.
Perils of Cocaine Abuse As to which are the life-enhancing drugs and which the life-destroying, you'll get no answers from government "authorities", who are mostly interested in maintaining the illusion that they are the protectors of the people's welfare — the better to preserve their allocated budgets (which money comes, involuntarily, from the pockets of the people they falsely claim to protect).There is plenty of evidence (in the literature) from people who have used psychedelics that these drugs (LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, etc.) generally have positive effects, sometimes even major beneficial effects. Cannabis is a divine gift to mankind (Christians might reflect on the fact that the Bible — in Genesis — says that God gave to mankind for its use all the seeds and plants upon the Earth; this includes the cannabis plant). Alcohol has its beneficial uses, though injudicious use of this substance causes many problems in modern society. Tobacco may be OK for some people, but for most it is extremely addictive, and kills about 300,000 people each year in the U.S. Heroin is addictive also, but in comparison to tobacco very few people die from its use. But if we want to talk about bad drugs we haven't yet got to the worst. Cocaine is addictive, its use ruins lives, and when some people smoke crack cocaine they can go crazy (even to the point of killing other people). Amphetamine can also send you over the edge if used to excess. Even so, the use of these drugs should not be illegal, since people can use them without harming others, and if so, they have a right to do so.
Another drug which some people consider bad is PCP. This is not addictive, so it does not destroy lives in the way that cocaine can do. But (unlike its relative ketamine) it has a low margin of safety. It's easy to overdose, which can have unfortunate consequences, even for someone very experienced with psychedelics.
- PCP poem Written the morning after by an experienced tripper; 70 mg orally followed by another 70 mg orally two hours later (about twice as much as recommended — though PCP is definitely not recommended at all).
The issue with psychedelics is that they call into question the illusions of the masters. And I think it doesn't matter who the masters are. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about a fascist dictatorship, a high-tech industrial democracy, or a Third World banana republic — if you start taking psychedelics, you will start questioning the reality around you, and question-asking is not what the control freaks are interested in. They want you to work at your idiotic job, buy the crap they're peddling you over the media, and keep your opinions to yourself, please. ... This is a crisis. We should be going through lifeboat drills at this point, and instead, the band plays on, and the game continues to be played. The narcotics game, the government role in it, apparent suppression / tacit support, millions and billions of dollars in hot money being used to finance the murder of editors of left-wing newspapers and the financing of private armies in various rathole countries that are the client states of the remnants of the empire we created to oppose the Soviet Union. It's all CRAP. — Terence McKenna, Live at The Fez, NYC, 1993-06-20
A Few Good Rules Before You Trip:
1) Cars can hurt you.
2) You cannot fly.
3) It's never a good time to die.
4) Taking your clothes off will draw attention.
5) Keep your mouth shut at all times while in public.
6) Although you may see things that are not there, you won't NOT see things that aren't there.
7) Don't forget how to burp.
8) Only carry: a house-key, some loose change, and your address in your shoe.
9) Nobody can tell that you are tripping till you tell them "I'm tripping".
10) No matter how fucked-up you think you are, you'll eventually come down.(Found at NOFADZ.)
Further articles on this website:
- Nicholas Sand, including:
- A Message about Drugs and a Reply
- A Little Help From One's Friends
- Two extracts from the CD-ROM Psilocybian Mushroom Cultivation: A Brief History by John W. Allen and Jochen Gartz PhD.
- The Albert Hofmann Collection
- Bogus Science — the LSD-chromosome scare of the 1960s and 70s.
- Charles Hayes: Is Taking a Psychedelic an Act of Sedition?
- An Alternative Understanding of Gnosticism
- David Porush: Finding God
Serotonin and the hallucinogens that act as serotonin agonists — like LSD, mescaline, DMT, and psilocybin — also travel to the thalamus, a relay station for all sensory data that are heading for the cortex. There, conscious rationalizings, philosophizings, and interpretations of imagery occur. The cortex of the brain now attaches meaning to the visions that bubble up from the limbic lobe — of burning bushes or feelings of floating union with nature. ... And the result is very likely to be a new way of thinking, new insights, conversion experiences.- Bruce Eisner: Island Foundation — Toward a New [Psychedelic] Culture
- Julie Holland, M.D.: Conference Highlights: Hallucinogenic Drugs in Experimental Psychiatric Research
- A comment on this report by Jay Hamm.
- Steven Gilman: Pilgrim Tales
Ayahuasca is a brew prepared by boiling the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which contains harmala alkaloids, and Psychotria viridis (or another plant), which contains DMT. The harmala alkaloids render the DMT orally active, and the brew is drunk by South American shamans to induce powerful visions. Steven Gilman travelled in South America and partook of ayahuasca with several shamans. His experiences are recorded in his book Pilgrim Tales, which is published for the first time here on Serendipity.
- Mitchell Barnes: Desert High and Re: Desert High
Tells of an experience following ingestion of 40 grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms. This is about eight times the recommended normal dose.
- Hara Ra: A Technique for the Preservation of Psilocybe Cubensis
A short article concerning the preservation of dried psilocybin mushrooms. Hara Ra invented this technique in the early 1980s, and he sent me this article sometime around 1990 (it has not previously been published). I have not tested this technique and so cannot confirm that it is effective, but the author is reliable.
One reader expressed some reservations about this method, to which Hara Ra replied.
Years later another reader, Doc Haux, contributed further advice on this subject.
- Dennis and Terence McKenna write of the tryptamine doorway.
If the world beyond the doorway can be given consensual validation of the sort extended to the electron and the black hole — in other words, if the world beyond the doorway is found to be a necessary part of scientifically mature thinking about the world — then our own circumscribed historical struggle will be subject to whole new worlds of possibility.
- Rick Strassman: Abstract of a paper published in Biological Psychiatry
Concerning tolerance to closely-spaced i.v. DMT administration.
- The Introduction from the 1996 Positronics Sinsemilla Fanclub Catalogue. A few words from some folks in the Netherlands, a country which has long been an island of sanity in that ocean of insanity which is the Drug War.
- Stephen Snelders: The Use of Psychedelics in Dutch Psychiatry 1950-1970
My central thesis ... is that introduction and rediscovery of the use of psychedelics (or psycholytics, or hallucinogens) was possible because this use stood in a continuum with the development of psychiatry before that time. We now have to ask ourselves why this continuum was broken: why after 1966, not only in the Netherlands but also in other countries, there was such a fierce reaction against the scientific study of psychedelics.
- The Dutch artist herman de vries has for several years been editing and publishing a scientific journal called integration with articles (in English and in German) about plant psychedelics (he prefers the adjective "mind-moving" to "psychedelic"). Here is his editorial from the first issue.
- Russ McClay: The Pineal Gland, LSD and Serotonin
This article presents "correlations between the Pineal Gland, the psychopharmacological molecule LSD and, its antagonistic neurotransmitter Serotonin."
- National Institute of Justice: Rise in Hallucinogen Use
- Alun Rees: Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD when he discovered the secret of life
- Walter Benjamin and Profane Illumination
- LSD-25 Synthesis from "Psychedelic Guide to the Preparation of the Eucharist"
- Conversation with Christopher Bache (PDF file)
The pioneering ethnobotanist Richard Shultes died 2001-04-10.
- Elaine Woo: Richard Schultes, Jungle-Drug Explorer, Dies at 86
- Herbert Girardet: Obituary of Richard Schultes
- The Economist: Obituary — Richard Schultes
Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, died 2008-04-29.
WE HOLD THIS TRUTH
THAT ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE CREATED DIFFERENT.
That every human being has the right to be mentally free and independent. That every human being has the right to feel, see, hear, sense, imagine, believe or experience anything at all, in any way, at any time. That every human being has the right to behave in any way that does not harm others or break fair and just laws. That no human being shall be subjected without consent to incarceration, restraint, punishment or psychological or medical intervention in an attempt to control, repress or alter the individual's thoughts, feelings or experiences.
— UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF MENTAL RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
A Psychedelics Reading List Psychedelic Links
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Prohibition: The So-called War on Drugs Eulogy for Terence McKenna Serendipity Home Page