Drugs for mental/spiritual exploration
 

I asked these questions once before quite a while ago. However, as we have quite a few new people on this board I'm going to ask them again.
If you answered before feel free to respond again if you like.

Do you think that hallucinogenic drugs such as peyote, lsd, mushrooms, dpt, dxm, amt, salvia, dmt, foxy, mdma or mda have any legitimate spiritual or mental explorational use.

Why or why not?

Have you ever done any hallucinogen or dissasociative? If so was the experience positive or negative?

If you have not, what are you basing your answer on?

Sure, make the colors of your words flow together and then ask me what I sang it from! Why not? It's all so many singing midges in a Marlboro box to me.

Drugs
 

Max :love

I don't know if I should be replying, since the only actual experience I've had with drugs is alcohol and weed (eaten, not smoked), but having a very scientific view of the world around me, I don't believe there's much spiritual knowledge to be gained from using them.

Whether it might teach you something about the person you are (mental exploration), I wouldn't dare to guess. I've tossed around the idea of trying out mushrooms, though my sister (who has used them) thinks it might be too hefty for me. The main reason why I'd consider trying any kind of hallucinogenics is because I think it could be incredibly inspirational to whatever artistic branch you're into. On the other hand, I've been holding it off cause I think it could be incredibly scary as well, particularly to someone who's still capable of making up things to scare him in the dark at age 20 :P

Drugs
 

FS,

I waited until I was 27 to try anything other than smoke (not my favorite thing even now, don't really use it) and speed (twice - hated it still do won't touch the stuff)

I'm glad I did. I have a hell of a lot more respect for "the trip" than I would have had I done it to party and done it earlier in life.

:love
I will be 28 soon and that still happens to me. Actually it has gotten worse :( I don't know how I will ever function if I make it to 60. Anyway my point is... boy, you are FUCKED!

Drugs
 

FS,

Mushrooms seem to be the best for artists. Though of course that is my opinion. LSD makes me too flighty and all the others I have tried so far make me too jittery and shakey to even consider anything artistic. I usually can't even write or type. Some of the people I trip with have taken to secretly tape recording me so that I have a record of where my head was at and what I have come up with to adapt to things later on.

If I tried anything, I'd like to play it safe and have someone around NOT using anything. Just in case I panic.

My sister's told me of some of the weird things she saw while doing shrooms, and that she and her friend wrote up all kinds of stuff that made no sense whatsoever afterwards. But the kind of inspiration I was thinking of wasn't really to write or paint while on the stuff, but get inspired by the hallucinations and dreamy images to do later on - writing about things so weird you probably wouldn't have thought of them while sober. Though crazy notes could be a strong inspiration as well, I guess. Well, if the circumstances and my mindset are right, I guess I'll find out.

Meanwhile, I bet I'll die of an exploding bladder when I'm lying completely still in bed at night, afraid to move cause I heard a crash downstairs :(

Drugs
 

At nearly 30 I still have fears of things that go bump in the night.
Doopa is right.....you're fucked. :D


Having someone there who is sober is what most experienced users and psychonauts call a trip sitter. I use one any time I am going out, taking a dissasociative (nothing quite like coming too with your head in the top loading washing machine and wondering how the hell you got there and even more importantly.....why), doing an unknown or untested combo or anything I haven't done before with really positive results. This includes doing a new batch of a substance I have done before. I will never guinny pig without a trip sitter.

I am forty and I make things go bump in the night. And during the day. And anything near me at any time that is succeptable to bumping.


As for drugs, only my hairdresser knows for sure.



And I don't amemeber.


I hear Vince is wicked heavy into Anoxia.

Drugs
 

Max is creepy bump in the night guy. 8-)

Better to be creepy then to get the creeps.

Actually the 'Hebrew jeebies' are my specialty.

I don't understand how drugs would really help with spiritual or mental exploration. The way I see it, if you want to do it, you just do it. What difference do the drugs make either way?

Having little to no experience with drugs aside from tobacco, alcohol and maybe two dances with marijuana, I can't really speak for a creative burst hallucinogens may give to someone.

However, I'd be too afraid to try it. I've heard about people doing some extremely stupid things while tripping (and I mean besides just plain old acting stupid). I've heard about a man who started tripping on shrooms and beat his kids to death because he thought they were demons.

BUT... I support it in SOME capacity. It is a Native American tradition, and since it is a major part of their lives (and not just because they are getting high) I see nothing wrong with that.

The only cases I'd say I don't support are the recreational users... and not even those, I'd say more the recreational abusers are the ones that shouldn't be touching the stuff.

So I guess the bottom line is, it ultimately depends on the situations. I'd allow it in the case of tradition (i.e. Native Americans who don't harm anyone while on it) and I'd disallow it for most other fucks (i.e. the redneck who does it and then goes off to slap his wife a few dozen times)

Since this isn't a political subject I would like to say that I grew up in B.C. and I did some drugs. I am almost the same age as the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile and I don't recall ever doing anything on Mushrooms,LSD or Pot that was really creative. Alchohol is the only thing that seems to loosen my brain (1 or 2 drinks). I would really like to know if Heroin is really what helped famous musicians write there music or it was the fact that it dullened other senses so they could be creative with a different part of there brain?

Truthfully, I have only smoked weed and hash in my life, and I can say the experience was less than interesting. All I kept hearing was cop sirens and I thought I was drowning in my own spit.

The problem I have with drugs as a "spiritual expander" is pretty basic. Bill Hicks was a big believer in drugs for that above purpose. Now he hated organized religion, but since he was getting high to expand his mind, it was ok. That is the problem I have. Unless doing drugs is deeply-rooted in your culture, like it is with American Indians, then a vast majority of the time your doing it just to be "cool." I'm sorry, but if you need drugs to encounter some kind of spirtual feeling, then you are shallow to begin with.

People believe you can just access spirituality from doing drugs. It's something that is ALWAYS in you. You don't go to your spiritual side, its just always there. I don't want to sound like a hippy, but its true. Doing drugs to try to get spiritual because you don't like religion doesn't make you wise or ancient, it makes you an idiot and a stoner.

Do drugs because you want to get high. Don't act like it makes you creative or any of that bullshit. If you are not creative to begin with, it won't make you any moreso.

Would I do drugs again? Possibly. Do I seek to get high? Not really.

"Do drugs because you want to get high"
...

"Would I do drugs again? Possibly. Do I seek to get high? Not really."

So... then... you would do drugs again possibly to be "cool"?

I would do drugs for the sole purpose of getting high and screwed up. Not to be "cool".

So then, what did you mean by:

"Would I do drugs again? Possibly. Do I seek to get high? Not really."


IF you did drugs again (and you imply you might) Would you THEN be seeking to be 'high'?

And when you did 'hash' and 'weed', were you at that point attempting to be 'cool', or seeking to be 'high'?

I'm with the general conscesus here ... weed and alcohol. I DO have a question, though ... and bear in mind that I'm not really the creative, artistic type. Anyway, if it takes drugs to explore the mind and bring new things to his art (whatever that may be), how is somebody supposed to understand that work when: a) the creator's head is not in the same place as when he created the work b) the observer of the artwork more than likely has not experienced said drug and, if so, it doesn't mean that he was "there" where the artist was and is, therefore in no better position to understand the work. Does my question make sense to anyone? Maybe it will after you ingest a lil' sumpin' sumpin ... fo' shizzle. :)

It wouldn't be all that different from being inspired by dreams. If someone would actually write a book while under the influence of hallucinogenics, then I guess nobody could make much sense out of it. But they'd have to write really, really fast. That's why I was looking more for inspiration in the memory of hallucinations.

As for visual art, it's not necessary to understand it. And eitherway, everyone would experience the drug in their own way, so that would do little to change the appreciation for the art or writing.

Drugs
 

Kelly -

Have you ever looked at fractals? Those are just about best interpretation of lsd closed eye visuals. Open eye is very much like the background art from Nightmare Before Christmas. Very dark and pointy, edgy and evil.

Mushrooms are more like Dali. Everything seems to be melting or stretching.

MDMA and MDA tend to give me a tribal tatoo visual. Like a shadow on any pale object. Skin, walls, ceilings......

As for the mental aspect......it is different every single time.

Oh....and I can't draw or paint and it sucks 'cause I'd love for others to see what is in my head......


Zeb -

I've always been very very spiritual. When I started to drugs it was mostly to see what it was all about. What I discovered was that there is an apect to certain drugs that is very much like being in a deep meditative trance. Mushroom especially.
Also, the way that I view religion...all religion becomes a bit deeper or a bit different when I am high. Sometimes this is a good thing sometimes it is a bad thing. AMT sucked all the spirit out of the world for me. The world was a machine. I was a machine nothing more. Being very spiritual this was not what I expected. However, though it was not the most enjoyable, I decided to see where it would take me as opposed to just letting it become a bad trip(it was still bad). What it ended up doing was giving me a new way to think about my dyslexia and my panic attacks. Though I still have problmes with numbers, I have since taken on some accounting at work. I also got over my fear of driving (not while high....after) and finally at 29 got my licence and bought a car. Though I don't have any desire to do AMT again, I am quite intrigued by the fact that it seemd to tweak my perceptions enough to make me believe that as a machine I could be reprogramed to get past certain obsticals. This kind of thing by the way is what facinates me about drugs. Psychedelics especially.

But, like everything else in my life I have to be honest about things. Do I drugs for the spiritual aspect? Not often. Do I do it for the mental exploration? Sometimes. Out of curiosity? More often than not. Because I enjoy the high? DING DING DING. However, if the trip leads to something else, and for me it usually does, I count myself lucky. More than once I have found a new way too look at a problem while tripping. Most of the time tunnel vision is impossible. There is an opening of the mind that allows new possabilities and new concepts to flow more freely. The down side, sometimes they don't make sense the next day......

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT THINK THAT DRUGS ARE A GOOD THING. THEY ARE NOT SAFE. THEY ARE NOT A GAME. AND I HATE LITTLE STUPID PARTY HEADS WHO DUMB SHIT AND GET HURT. HOWEVER, JUST LIKE DRIVING OR DRINKING OR SKYDIVING OR SNOWBOARDING......DRUGS CAN BE SAFER (NEVER SAFE) IF YOU TAKE PROPER PRECAUTIONS.
Also, I admit I am an anomally. I will delve into my bad trips just as deeply as I do my good ones. I am just so damned interested in seeing when they are going and what my brain is trying to tell me (if anything at all) My S/O on the other hand.....he is Captain Denial. He bad trips on everything. And thinks I am a freak because I enjoy my bad trips as much as my good ones.

Anyhoo.....off my soapbox......

Drugs
 

Proto -

I think I got most of your question in with Zebs, however.....

Psychedelics do tend to open your perceptions a bit. They make it a bit harder to be stubborn about a concept or a particular line of thought.

Can people do the same without drugs? Sure, but most people are too stubborn to admit when there are other possibilities. Sometimes, psychedelics can break that down.

Say if I went over to Japan, and some hot girl dressed up like a playboy bunny wanted to go smoke a little weed and have sexual intercourse, I would be there in a microsecond. But I don't go out and buy drugs or seek to get high. I don't spend my money or do it every single time it is offered. So, I would get high if certain circumstances presented themselves but I am not a druggie.

I don't think drugs are a good thing either, but you might as well make items such as pot and shrooms legal. They are on the level with beer and you would more than likely see a reduction in usage if the whole persona of being a "rebel" status item was lifted.

Zeb
 

You're a pig.


















I respect that.