While I was on a retreat this year in a Peruvian village, I was told by several natives (Shipibo people) that, by their tradition (some estimations are that Shipibo tribes have been using Ayahuasca for millenias), Ayahuasca is orally taken in healing ceremonies by their shamans only. Traditionally, in the normal course of a healing ceremony, it is not a patient who takes 'the medicine' or 'the plant teacher' (Ayahuasca), but the shaman in order to learn from the plant what his patient illness is and how to go about healing it. Also traditionaly, Ayahuasca is taken during shamanic training (which takes years, if not a whole life) as a part of a special and very strict diet that can last between several weeks to a year or more, depending on a plant that one is dieting. During the diet shaman apprentice is supposed to take Ayahuasca, but only at the beginning and at the end of the diet, if it is a short one, or every once in couple of months if the diet is longer. The diet is a way to become familiar with the plant and learn what it has to teach you and Ayahuasca, the teacher plant, is used as a sort of a learning facilitator. From my understanding, a practice of organizing Ayahuasca ceremonies and giving the brew to foreigners in exchange for money has been relatively recently established with rising popularization of Ayahuasca and demand for it from abroad.
I read a fascinating book called The Cosmic Serpent [0] wherein a team of biologists went to Peru to document the kinds of things that shamans have learned by taking Ayahuasca.
If you want to know more about this, I highly recommend it as basic reading.
I was not long enough to make any general conclusions, but from what I could see it is a mixture. I saw quite a few 'westerners' who had given up 'western' medicine and came to try Ayahuasca for various reasons. As for natives, I don't know, I think they still go to traditional healers, but also very rapidly adopt 'western lifestyle'. I'm sure 'western' medicine is not an exception from this trend. Ayahuasca still seems to be deeply ingrained in their culture and original religion (which is a sort of spiritual pantheism for the lack of a better term), it is considered holly plant and still deeply revered and respected. Personally, I would not like to see this tradition they have preserved for millennia to disappear or completely mutates into something like "Ayahuasca turism"...
dang, apologies, but the parent didn't seem to be taking this on a generic tangent. The OP has a very interesting anecdotal story to tell, related directly to a group of people that take ayahuasca for healing, and I, too, am curious about how it worked for them, specifically.
Uh oh, on a proper reading I see that you're right. Thanks for pointing it out.
I overhastily ascribed the comment to the "western medicine, you mean real medicine?" meme that doesn't belong here. Perils of pattern-matching. Retracted!
Having had frequent ceremonies over the course of several months I stopped drinking the tea, because I find it is not helping being pulled from one extreme into another. Our western way of life makes it very difficult to integrate the profound experiences that one can get through this medicine and it requires major commitments to change..and it requires good helpers and facilitators. We, as westerners, are often times not equipped to integrate this lost wisdom into our lives. I know it is said it is not addictive but I know enough people that at least appear dependent on it and swear by it being the solution.
I personally believe that meditation and journeying inward without drugs brings about insights of a similar magnitude in a pace that we can cope with and integrate what we learn without jojo’ing between bliss and depression.
Ayahuasca has its place. It definitely helped us experience that there is much more to life than the material. But in my opinion I t’s a sledge Hammer that helps crack hard nuts or sets a direction. The work has to be done by oneself and the risk with ayahuasca is that one just keeps drinking the tea, thinking that that is enough.
Apart from that it is quite dangerous nowadays to do ceremonies with traveling “shamans”, because a lot of them don’t even brew the tea themselves and oftentimes facilitate in a way that it is bound to go wrong at some point.
Or psychoactive drugs don’t teach you anything new but rather modify brain functionality such that you feel different. Gaining new belief or believing you have new beliefs are typically indistinguishable from the inside.
Well, could’t You say the same thing about experiences of any nature? For example: our thoughts always affect our body/mind .. if I take a drug or in the case of ayahuasca an entheogen, it creates a non ordinary state of consciousness, which -if strong enough- can permanently change the way I feel and act. The same you could achieve by meditating on a regular basis or going on a long trip, having a traumatic experience etc .. our brains are being modified constantly by our experiences, not just by drugs. And yeah, a belief is a belief - if it’s a conscious belief you could say ‘I believe in having this belief’ and if it’s unconscious it’s just a belief I am not consciously aware of. But both have the same
Effect on my body and mind
It permanently changes you by causing conditions by which your brain rewires itself. For psychiatric patients that is often a good thing because where they are at is not a good place. But why would you throw a spanner in the works if you're already a well adjusted individual?
If you want to be content and enjoy life, why not get a lobotomy. It's a more consistent result. Oh you don't want to do that to your brain? Well acid may have different mechanisms but can trigger similarly drastic effects, it's just now you've introduced a roll of the die, and I'm not a fan of gambling without a winning strategy.
Given your very clear and strong stance that this is something you won't ever try, of which I don't have any issue with, I won't spend a lot of time debating this statement.
But, your analogy with getting a lobotomy to enjoy life being even remotely equivalent to doing psychedelics is simply wrong. The effects are not similar. You are also drastically overestimating the gambling nature of psychedelics.
You're probably way more likely to wreck your life while drinking alcohol than you are with psychedelics.
What is different between having a new belief and having your brain functionality modified such that you indistinguishably genuinely feel you have a new belief? Wouldn't the act of integrating a new belief also modify your brain functionality somehow? Not trying to start an esoteric argument, I'm interested if there's an actual answer to that.
You can profoundly understand something because you understand the mechanism of its working and have deeply integrated it into your mental model of the world. Or you can "profoundly understand" something by having your brain remember what it feels like to profoundly understand, and enter that state in association with the new belief. Even if the belief is wrong (and you will never see that it is wrong).
I agree. Sometimes these substances act like a bulldozer that destroy doors that should have remained closed. For some people, opening these "doors" will lead to more harm than good. I am not writing this to demonize psychedelics, but only to say they can be unpredictable.
As I grow older, I realize we are the product of organized and sometimes very ancient memories and obviously we have not been told (by parents, society) to take a step back and look at things from a detached perspective. As a results, we are like prisoners of memories, symbols and habits, unable to see what's beyond all that.
Ayahuasca is a South American brew consisting of two plants one consisting of a MAOI and another of DMT (the exact plant genus differs). DMT without a MAOI gets broken down by the blood brain barrier, so its not efficient without the MAOI.
The MAOI however puts dietary restrictions before the drug is being administered, and also makes the drug last vastly longer. Without the MAOI, the DMT wouldn't last long (IIRC even less long than Salvia). That might be an interesting use case.
Apart from that, there's all the time research on tryptamines [1] (MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, etc) used to treat mental diseases and personality disorders. The advantage synthetic drugs have is they're easier to standardise. I'm not sure why you'd want to research MAOI + DMT instead of the ones already mentioned? What advantages could it have over those?
I assume Ayahuasca refers to MAOI + DMT instead of merely DMT, but I could be wrong. Although which plants would be used as source? Maybe we should try to avoid the term Ayahuasca altogether; it is vague.
> Ayahuasca has a lot of bad side effects such as vomiting, sea legs, and diarrhea
Those are side effects which can occur; not side effects which will occur. Ie. possible side effects.
Its anecdotal and merely one experience as well, but I had no problem with diarrhea or vomiting. Sea legs, yes, which I knew beforehand. Hence I made sure I was able to lie down (which I did).
As a young adult in beginning of my 20s I've experimented with a plethora of other drugs as well, mostly psychedelics which back then were legally available, at least where I'm from (Ayahuasca is still legal here [1]).
Its been a good 10 years ago but during my experience with DMT + MAOI (self prepared, legally bought from a company called Azarius). From what I remember, I merely saw dragons in all kind of colours whilst lying down. I couldn't see through it just like you described. Auditory perception was vastly altered as well, akin to psilocybin, but with psilo I often lacked the visual aspect of 'tripping'.
The most anxious part of my consumption was the preparation because of the dangers associated with the MAOI. I carefully avoided everything except one cup of espresso a few hours before I started intake. I also didn't quit smoking (back then I was an average smoker). I had no hunger during my usage, though I don't remember the effect on my smoking habits. I wrote various trip reports for private usage back then and still have them, but either I didn't do it with the Ayahuasca one or it got lost.
In hindsight it wasn't very mature. I did extensive research on all of the drugs (A. muscaria was particularly fascinating) but did not always have a babysitter. I had a mild psychosis from cannabis at one point, and a few years later I was diagnosed with GAD and AvPD. Recently, this got reverted to a primary diagnosis of ASD (autism) instead. I also have schizophrenia in my family, though distant, and have memory problems. ASD has severe effects on sensitivity, thus could potentially be dangerous with psychedelics. Perhaps also worth noting that years after I quit recreative drugs usage I had one severe psychosis, triggered by stress.
DMT is extremely powerful and short-lived when taken via smoking or injection. It is interesting because it is an endogenous substance, and it is essentially the root of all of the related hallucinogens like Psilocybin or LSD - . Psilocybin is turned into psilocin, which is 4-hydroxy-N,N-DMT, and then DMT in your body shortly after you ingest it. Compare the chemical structure to LSD, too.
My brother went on an Ayahuasca retreat but ended up deeply disappointed that it didn't change his life and his problems got much worse as a result.
Of course, that can happen with any treatments as well. However, professional support could maybe mitigate that a bit. Plus actual data may give a better idea of likely outcomes.
He then came home and took LSD that caused an episode of psychosis that lasted a couple weeks and landed him on the hospital plus in trouble with the law.
I don't disagree that these drugs can be beneficial for many people and should be studied but there is dangers as well and the dangers are often downplayed as "just anti drug FUD."
> No current or past history of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, no Bipolar I or II disorder, and no first or second-degree (“A second-degree relative is defined as a blood relative which includes the individual’s grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces or half-siblings.”) relatives with these disorders.3
Also this means that it is advisable for you to steer clear of psychedelics.
For what it’s worth:
> “Since the early 1990s, approximately 2000 doses of psilocybin (ranging from low to high doses) have been safely administered to humans in the United States and Europe, in carefully controlled scientific settings, with no reports of any medical or psychiatric serious AEs, including no reported cases of prolonged psychosis or HPPD (Studerus et al., 2011).”1
I really dislike this argument. About 1% of US adults have had schizophrenia in the past year. And 2.6% of the adult population has bipolar. Yet at some point in their life they didn't know they were going to have schizophrenia or bipolar! You're arguing that this only affects people with the condition already but if you can't know if you are predisposed for that, then you have to accept that there's risk. I support studying the risk and benefits, but your argument suggests that the risk only applies to other people. It doesn't and it's destructive to suggest otherwise.
Let me put this another way. Their recommendations include first and second degree relatives. Wikipedia says that the risk of having schizophrenia when you have a first degree relative with it is 6.5% [1] This is the single biggest risk factor for it but it's still pretty small. If it's too dangerous to take based off a 6.5% risk then it's also probably too dangerous to take off the 1%-ish risk that the entire general population faces. At the very least, it's important to acknowledge that there exists these risks instead of replying to every anecdote that hurts your cause with this misleading information while allowing the anecdotes that help.
So you're 500% more likely to have schizophrenia when first-degree relatives are more involved.
Another book cited by the wiki page claimed that 13% of people with one parent, and 50% of people with both parents, are likely to have schizophrenia.
These aren't hard and fast rules. People can experiment, but they should know that if they do psychedelics when first-degree relatives have the condition, then they're more likely to have it themselves.
>A second-degree relative is defined as a blood relative which includes the individual’s grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces or half-siblings
You absolutely do not know the medical history of all those people to know if they have a history of schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, or bipolar disorder. People tend to not talk about their mental illness and these disorders can be well managed with medication. I have 17 aunts and uncles half of which I only see every 3-4 years and one I've never met. Do you think I know what their diagnosises are? Apparently one of my uncles had a really bad heart condition since birth but I didn't even know he did until it killed him in his 60s.
Plus if you just keep adding relatives you'll eventually get one with one of those conditions. You're more asking about family size at that point.
Thank you for sharing this. I've observed this with friends as well. As Tony Soprano once said: "There is no geographical solution to an emotional problem."
"There is no geographical solution to an emotional problem." - I really wish someone told me this 30 years ago. My above mentioned brother and I grew up with very abusive parents which cased significant emotional problems in both of us. I tried to solve mine by moving across the country. For anyone who is reading this - that really doesn't work!
> Could psychedelic drug ayahuasca have health benefits?
Certainly, anecdotally I kicked a very strong 20 year coffee and sugar habit after doing a 3-day retreat in Latin America this past winter. Just happened naturally, oh, I don't need this daily coffee and sugar fix anymore.
On the flip side, as the article mentions, the psychedlic tourism industry as a whole doesn't have formal safe guards in place for when the shit hits the fan with one (or more) of the attendees. My friend, who sat all eleven days, said that two women just completely lost it on day 3, screaming hysterically, out of their minds battling unknown demons.
The retreat "helpers", do the best they can to settle you down, but when you're deep in the experience it's very hard to distinguish between real/unreal. For example, in some kind of existential moment I shouted out in my mind's eye, "you are the most high!". In reality I shocked the 30 other attendants out of their seats, and a helper rushed up to see if I was Ok.
It's an extremely powerful substance. At the end of the retreat, when everyone headed off to sleep, I was still tripping so hard that sleep was impossible. When I finally lay down the sheer flow of non-stop Dali/Escher-like hallucinations running through my mind were sufficient to make me question whether I was ever going to return to reality -- Pandora's box indeed.
tl;dr; proceed with caution, can have beneficial side-effects.
"Certainly, anecdotally I kicked a very strong 20 year coffee and sugar habit after doing a 3-day retreat in Latin America this past winter. Just happened naturally, oh, I don't need this daily coffee and sugar fix anymore."
Isn't three days about how long it takes to get over caffeine withdrawal symptoms, regardless of whether one has retreated to Latin America and taken psychedelic drugs?
Can confirm, addictions to sugar, caffeine, alcohol and cannabis evaporated during my trip and did not return for many weeks. I had never felt so peaceful and balanced in my life. Whereas previously I was trying to escape chaos with substances, now consuming substances would only serve unbalance me.
I felt like, wow, this is what a human being is supposed to feel like! When you face what is within you, and process it, it no longer burdens you. Psychedelics seem to facilitate this process.
Out of the addictions you claim you had, only alcohol is severe. Cannabis is mostly psychological addiction but users often combine it with tobacco which is also physiological addicting.
Caffeine addiction is very easy to break with some sheer willpower. The withdrawal symptoms only last 1-2 days, and the side effects are a serious headache. That's nothing compared to heroin, nicotine, or alcohol addiction.
Sugar (and salt) is just a matter of habit. There is no conclusive evidence sugar is a proven addiction. You don't see burglars breaking in to steal sugar, do you?
Why would Ayahuasca work better than professional guidance (e.g. CBT) plus drugs with a proven track record such as Nalmefene, Naltrexone, Bupropion (Zyban), or Disulfiram (Antabuse)?
You wrote: "addictions [...] evaporated during my trip and did not return for many weeks". Do you mean your cravings were gone? I don't think one ever fully heals from an addiction. You're still an addict, just not one who's practicing their addiction (giving in to it). That is precisely where professional guidance can aid one.
To anyone who is addicted to alcohol I'd like to state: search professional help, please. Don't DIY medicate. If you are a severe alcoholic, you should not quit overnight. That is very dangerous. Instead, you need to slowly lower your dose. The best way to do that is, again, under professional guidance. A shaman might know a lot about Ayahuasca, but he's no MD.
Don't get me wrong, it is interesting to explore and discuss, and I'm also a proponent of scientific research in this field. However we should be wary with drug-related advice, or unrealistically high expectations.
I am all for seeking professional help, and I don't put faith in alternative medical practices. With that said, I think currently pharmacology is too constrained by special interest groups. Cannabis is a great example of something that greatly improves the quality of life for many people, but isn't recognized and respected as medicine by the medical community at large.
> Cannabis is a great example of something that greatly improves the quality of life for many people, but isn't recognized and respected as medicine by the medical community at large.
Scientific research can go (too) slow to your liking and/or needs.
With cannabis, that's been changing the past decade AFAICT. My late father had MS, and he had the opportunity to use cannabis to reduce the effects of MS well over 10 years ago (he didn't use that opportunity because of his preconceived notion about cannabis). My late uncle, who AFAIK never used cannabis before (it is decriminalized here), used cannabis to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. More and more governments are accepting medical marihuana/cannabis. Portugal has decriminalized a lot of drugs, and even in the conservative USA various States are finally adopting medical marihuana.
That being said, there are also cannabis zealots. E.g. some people abuse that scientific research to justify their pot smoking (which is here, unlike in USA, traditionally combined with tobacco, and regardless includes carcinogenics). They simply deny that smoking is bad for their lungs despite decades of evidence suggesting the contrary. I know one friend of my partner who claims cannabis is great for his diabetes but dismisses his change in lifestyle/diet. You cannot simply ignore such factors, and they greatly complicate scientific evidence in research, never mind for those who decide to self medicate based on such research.
> You don't see burglars breaking in to steal sugar, do you?
Sugar is easily available. I'm not saying it's addictive or not, I don't know enough about that, but if people are addicted to it, there's not a real need to steal it when you can buy a soda for less than $2. That's why you don't see burglars breaking in anywhere to steal it.
This is interesting. I only know one person that’s done it and he said the same thing. Kicked all the habits. I didn’t know him before his trip so I assumed he was kind of full of it.
Based on my escalating coffee bill maybe I should give this a swing...
So are the hallucinations ever “fun”? I’ve dabbled in other things and it has generally been very video game like kidjoy. All ayahuasca hallucinations I’ve read about have sounded terrifying.
I'm going to try very hard to describe this. It will not be enough :)
It's more than "fun", much more profound, it's Everything, perhaps the single most important thing. It's ineffable, yet, you still feel obligated to try and explain it, as I'm doing. You may experience total happiness, love, wholeness, but then seconds later experience the exact opposite, total depression, despair, loneliness, humiliation, fear, violence. You may experience a plane of existence where you ARE time, and you see how time affects everything at once, as a result, it's a feeling of timelessness, you can see everything happening, a feeling of eternal existence. Perhaps you will then see that the same way events are connected together to form the feeling of time, in fact, everything you know is connected together in your brain, you can move through any of the connections, not just temporal. You may experience realities similar to your own, perhaps many at once, but you may also be catapulted into a completely geometric and abstract universe of inexplicable nature, but you'll feel as if you understand it, as long as you don't try and describe it in language. You may "see" the fundamental structure of sound and music as your various neural compartments cross-fire and visual cortex processes sound or sound cortex process visual data. You may "see" sexuality. You may see good and evil and the necessary duality of the two. For that matter you may see the dualistic relationship of everything. Everything exists because defining non-existence commands the definition of existence. You may see the fundamental feedback loop where perception meets the internal mental model your brain builds to interpret reality. Wait? feedback loop? You don't even know which side is real, cause-effect is completely broken down, it's now a Strange Loop. You may then see, truly see, that your whole entire known reality, including everything you see and perceive to be "outside" of your body is all actually inside your brain. You're trapped, this is your reality. You will likely discover/meet your inner self, you will realize that the consciousness really is the tip of the iceberg as you get rocketed inward into your deep sub consciousness, which has a mind of it's own. Also, for me, it knew everything I was thinking in advance. So when I'd make a joke or expression it would react with "why are you responding to me, I'm the one that told you what you think", so you learn to just shut up and enjoy the ride. It will likely be so beautiful and significant that you may even question if what you experienced was a divine experience. It will be so intense that you will have had a glimpse as to what a super consciousness or hyper-intelligence may look like, as you become even more aware of how small your conscious mind really is in comparison to the whole. You may feel as if all, everything, every person is connected. For example, the knowledge of good vs evil, and the gradient between, and hot and cold, and temperatures between, are these really different things? After all, in your brain they are both represented as neural connections, a graph if you will. And is it just the interpretation of the neural pattern that gives them meaning? The brain just being a massive network of brain cells, where the fundamental unit is a connection, you may realize, no wonder the foundation of human reasoning is also limited to the notion of stateful logic.
Perhaps, after 10 hours of this, you start to want to come back to reality, but you learned something very important this day. You can't go back, you don't, part of you has transcended to Buddha-hood. But you're a stubborn human, you fight to come back, that fighting, rooted in fear, fear is linked to many other negative memories, they may take command of your brain. Have you went crazy? Did you just forgo your conscious existence as you knew it? Then you're sitting there, watching yourself in a mental institution as your family is there crying wondering what happened to you, but communication with them is futile as you have transcended, but part of you, is stuck in that body, for 50 years as you've realized that this infinite experience is just a bit more than you asked for. But that's just one of the many negative things you dream up! Of course, acid is illegal where you lived, so that random sound is the cops showing up and escorting you out. Or perhaps you wake up naked and vulnerable outside, but it's just a trip, as you rock back and forth between the meta-mind-space and all these false realities. (a process called "looping") You face all your fears and inner personal problems, you confront your selfish ego, and all the negative things about yourself, you're embarrassed of yourself as your mind is nakedly exposed. Just as you got to see all the beauty of nature, you also realize how messed up you and everything is. It's hard, very hard, but you face it and accept it. This is what some people call a "bad trip", but to me, that is precisely what made it a "good trip". You eventually grab on to pieces of reality, one at a time, until you finally come all the way back. It takes many hours, and days to process everything. You're never really sure if you ever came back. But you don't mind. You've experienced enlightenment. You're at peace with yourself and the universe, if there's even a difference. You have a new appreciation for everything. But similarly, you also realize the empty, void of meaning nature of the universe. For some people this is all too much. For me, this was the ultimate lens into "reality", and gave me a new spark and energy for life that is unparalleled to any previous experience.
A small side note: This feels very great to have finally shared. It has been melting inside me to get out.
Was that acid or ayahuasca? Did you do multiple days?
I’ve done acid a handful of times. I’ve luckily never had a “bad trip” but I did have to untangle a friend from a coil of barbed wire which he thought was jungle vines.
Another time (I’m from Florida) I went out during a tropical storm (we don’t take those seriously) with a shovel and a laminated note from myself reminding me “everything is OK, but go inland if the water gets above your belly button” and buried myself waste deep in the sand at the beach to force myself to watch the storm. That was a crazy night.
Lightening is weird when it sticks to the ground permanently.
I did 5 tabs my first time without realizing how strong acid was. I had no reference, no preparation, no warning. I was just thrown into the deep end. It was so intense that I didn't even remember entering the trip, I wasn't sure if I just died or how I got there. It took, what I would have perceived as lifetimes for me to ground myself and realize what was going on.
I say the "perceived lifetimes" because there was literally times where I'd experience trips that absolutely took hours in perceived time, but they would always be interrupted by my friend's snore in the next room. His snore was the trigger for a loop to reset.
One in particularly was when I was "arguing" with myself about how of course my mental reality was less accurate than real reality, and my brain was telling me that it actually doesn't know the difference and that the only reality is what it knows. Then after me arguing that it's mental models were inferior, the next thing I know I'm walking down a sidewalk,
feeling the heat of the sun and everything. I'm talking with my friend, explaining the trip to him and how happy I am that it's over. But he just keeps smiling at me strangely and asks "you don't get it yet?", to which I respond, "what are you talking about." To which he says "nothing, never mind," and we keep walking. Then I hear a snore, that shakes the whole entire space. I look at my friend, he smiles. I realize that the whole thing was conjured up. He looks at me and says "That's what it's all about." and then the trip collapses back to a more abstract meta-mind space. That walk was for at least 20 minutes. But it all happened between two snores. Absolutely wild.
I got myself into that mess a few times with the whole “we got ripped off let’s take it all just in case” just to realize I didn’t get ripped off and the first thing I always think when it kicks in is “I got ripped off”
Now as a grown up(ish) it’s turned into “I got ripped off, oh never mind I’m high this is fine”
That's pretty much how I ended up taking 5 tabs. I definitely learned my lesson, but am very grateful I did it. My second trip with 1 tab was not even remotely comparable nor as enlightening. I actually haven't done it since (definitely open to), but have noticed that now I can reach a similar state through mediation. I noticed something else odd as well though, now if I do marijuana edibles (sativa), I can actually revisit the psychedelic state, not as intense, but enough for me to question if I ever left the psychedelic state to begin with.
Weed's psychedelic properties are vastly understated. Especially for people who aren't exposed to it, the first few times is definitely a very psychedelic experience.
Oh wow that sounds amazing. I was sadly in a dark house locked in a room with a bathroom. Environment wise it can't get much worse.
My second time I only did 1 tab and it was much more sane and I was intact with reality. The amazing thing about that experience was that when watching the sky and trees, I saw pinks and purples that don't exist as typical colors and they would move between dark and light shades following very intricate patterns. This would also cause my do shift from happy to sad and back. Eventually, after a long time, I realized what I was seeing was the pattern of the wind flowing through everything. Was amazing because I'm pretty sure it's something we don't typically consciously think about. :)
I also want to be careful that people don't do acid because they think it's going to be "fun." They will likely be in for a large surprise if they do. They should instead be prepared and do it safely. It's a lot different than drinking a beer.
That's a very good way to describe it. I hadn't thought about it, but indeed, every time I "grasp" something, it unfolds/collapses/opens/transforms into something else, (over and (over and (over and (...))).
I wonder if it's because information flows in cycles throughout the brain. Any thought that you would be aware of is because your brain observed its own thought, thus starting the thought cycle over again. It would seem that this just repeats continuously as your brain thinks. :)
Sure, but this comment was supposed to convince me do undergo hallucinogenic treatment because it can be profound experience, or something. I'm not really sure actually, but it does say that in the first sentence.
The actual result could not have been more different. I'll Nope out of that one, thank you.
I wasn't trying to convince you of anything. You asked if psychedelic experiences are fun. I responded with an attempt at a more "complete" explanation.
i.e. It's a full-mind experience. It encompasses all your known feelings/thoughts, and will likely even transcend those. The word fun is too simple to describe the experience.
I don't know if "desirable" is a suitable word for describing psychedelic experience. You don't really get to pick the outcome. The outcome largely depends on your inner self.
I don't know if any words can truly do it justice. I truly think it's an ineffable experience. :)
Personally I find the idea of setting out to muddle the perception of reality terrifying. I've had sleep deprivation hallucinations and I think everyone should do whatever is in their power not to hallucinate.
Salvia can be a very negative experience and has allegedly caused suicides.
DMT is almost a universally euphoric and positive experience although not Ayahausca. I have never heard of anyone committing suicide after either.
The big problem with psychedelics is how people spread fear and uncertainty. Try sharing the death statistics for alcohol the next time you share a bottle of wine with a romantic interest.
If salvia is very negative for you then you're doing too much. Sadly most people use salvia "extracts" which are almost guaranteed to be far too much to handle. Stick with plain leaf.
It would likely be quite difficult to ethically do such a study. Correlation alone isn't compelling: it could simply be that the underlying reason a significant share of people turn to [insert mind-altering substance here] is underlying emotional suffering, trauma, etc. and if the substance doesn't offer any improvement they end up resorting to suicide.
But based on the 3rd-hand reports I have read (the suicide can't/doesn't report), the self-kill-decision seems more immediate than the realization that the efficacy of the substance wasn't, you know, efficacious.
Yea, in simple terms it has a multiplier effect on everything you experience. If feelings go bad, they can go really bad and remain that way afterwards.
But you commented on suicide. I also have a friend who unfortunately passed this way. Do you have any data on this? From what I have seen, studies have been limited.
I had read somewhere on erowid years ago a study where an increase in mental illness and suicide after psychadelic use was positive but less than an increase seen in another study of people who had completed religious quests.
"Just yesterday, I've been in party and one guy told story of his friend who committed suicide after such trip."
unpleasant theory: maybe in some cases it is even better, that a person just kills himself after a drug-triggered insight - instead of years of drowning everybody around them into their black hole - and still suicide in the end. (or worse, go amok)
But sure, I am not saying at all, that this was the case in your story. What I know is, that Psychedelics are no miracles. The "insights" you get, might be also totally wrong and misleading.
I see Drugs as "tools" for the mind. You can use them right, or wrong.
The main insight is more likely that people like you exist, with your immature attitude/ridiculous theory on suicide. I find your kind to be subtly destructive and all too common.
It is probably pointless, but to try more arguments, I think the same about you " I find your kind to be subtly destructive and all too common"
The illusionary theory, that every human must be saved at all costs. Only that in reality "by all costs" means very often, that not only one goes down, but also many people around them.
I have seen it too often. And in the end, those persons might indeed still breathe, but more like zombies and not really alive .
Letting go can be less cruel in the bigger picture.
Do you actually have experience with counterculture? Primal instincts based around the idea of dominance prevail as often do in any social hierarchy, and the musings about some type of altruistism surrounding suicide by the commenter to whom I replied reflect this reality.
In short, the counterculture movement is plenty infiltrated with immature and often sociopathic mentalities that heartlessly harass sensitive folks who are at their most vulnerable under the influence of psychedelics. This is rarely discussed but is so prevalent, particularly since the age of exposure aligns with immature phases, adolesence in particular.
In laymen’s terms, it’s a sport to “fuck with” someone who has a “reaction”. Perhaps it’s the suicide victim realizing that, instead of this idea that they are a defective burden saving society from their own black hole via premature self termination, that they are escaping unwanted membership of a vastly primitive species. I assure you, the mentality of the suicidal is quite the opposite of “conventional wisdom” about being a burden, at least in some cases.
You told me I am imature, because I proposed the theory, that in some(!) cases, it might be better for a suicidal person to just kill himself, instead of everyone around them as well. (I know cases, where persons literally think about the latter, those I referenced)
So what has that to do with psychopaths who take advantage of sensitive persons and possible drive them to death?!?
Not at all related for the sake of the original argument.
But by now I know your type of person well, self-declared enlighted ... high above the "
primitive species" below.
But unhappy, because the primitive people have the power and therefore drive the enlightened down out of jealously. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Well in that case, what do you think about a very low specimen who is so down, that he hinks about either killing himself, or other's? Save him under all costs and risk him later still killing "enlightened" people? Or accept him choosing to go on his own, now?
Why do you care anyway, he's just from a "low species"...
Psychedelics provide a incredible jolt to the system (at least that's what they tell me) but if they do provide health benefits I believe they are short term, similar to traveling to another country or doing something unusual with your life. On the other hand, people that take psychedelics too often tend to have long term negative consequences such as anxiety or become dysfunctional in other ways. It's very hard to have nuanced opinions these days, but I think society in general needs to come to terms with psychedelics, the dangers they present, the novel experiences they enable, and some mental health benefits they may enable.
I am under the impression the United States pushed hard for the international treaty in 1961 that required these drugs be prohibited in most of those countries.
I don't have any evidence of this but I stronly suspect that doing regular meditation will reduce the chance of bad trips or atleast let you deal with them much better. I'm saying this in case someone decides to experiment with DMT or other halucinogens, you should seriously consider trying meditation as a prerequisite.
Just general health is a good prerequisite. I always liked to have a center/grounding focus for a trip if it starts to go off kilter. Back in High school I would use my world of warcraft character alot. That definitely seems dumb and not at all spiritual on reflection, but it would help ground me and lighten the mood (also he was a badass warrior so it was just cool to think about).
'The Mind Illuminated' by Culadasa aka John Yates is an excellent guide.
It takes you gently through 10 stages, from just beginning all the way up to Enlightenment (for some definition of Enlightenment). It thoroughly covers all bases without any mumbo jumbo.
It does however require you to ramp up your practice to at least an hour daily if you want to make the most of it. Personally I found this a little daunting at first, but now that I 'get it' I am actually really motivated to put in the time and I am getting a lot out of it.
The Mindful Geek (http://a.co/egwKvoo) could be a good starting point for the HN crowd. I'm about halfway through it and I enjoy the no-frills explanations of various meditation techniques.
In my experience, the most difficult part is keeping the practice in my daily routine. Just like with exercise, it's easier to absorb it into your lifestyle if you have a coach or a group of people with which you regularly train.
My reasoning: The idea of energy in the body is a very general concept that many different traditions have discovered independently (prana and qi are examples). Most people scoff at the concept but if you progress far in yoga or martial arts the metaphor makes sense and from a western perspective cells need energy to do their thing and that energy requires oxygen, nutrition and blood flow or some means of travel. The better your bodily awareness the more you can feel if a part of your body is cut off from the flow of energy.
Anyway to make a long story short nadishodana is a meditation practice designed to clean the "nadis" or energy channels in the body. Any psychadelic will greatly improve your bodily awareness to the point you will hallucinate vision of your energy flow. Ayahuasca especially helps with cleaning your body and breaking blocks in the energy flow, the more it has to clean the more you will need to change and the "trip" will be more hardcore.
I base this line of reasoning on anecdotal experience with using microdoses of psychadelics along with meditation to treat swelling after exercise and from having tried Ayahuasca and DMT before.
Are you accounting for confirmation bias in your anecdotal experiences?
There is no "western" perspective, there is only reality and falsehoods. Whilst I am a proponent of meditation and mental health, I don't think prana or qi exist as real physical entities in the real world because their presence has not been detected in reproducible, controlled settings.
There are many religions in the world, all of them false when scrutinized through the lens of science and reason. The whole concept of life energy is not grounded in reality based on the available evidence (or lack of evidence).
When I say western perspective I'm talking about the words I'm using not some different world... i.e. "cells need nutrition" ... but in meditation I feel a lot of the progress is changing your understanding of what it means to breathe. I kept (unwillingly) redefining the word until it had essentially became synonymous with the concept of "running lines of energy" (to whichever body part I wish to breath into).
Ultimately these words (prana, life energy, qi) are just metaphors to assist you with your own bodily awareness (so they are subjective) and maybe if you are some expert these metaphors can work for deciphering the body of someone else but trying to relate them to some object is not going to work. What I wish to say is that I don't consider these concepts to be objective truths in the same way I don't consider stories to be objective truths. However it does not impede my ability to learn from them.
Objective science is great for physics and is constantly improving our understanding of the human body as a machine but as individuals living in these machines we must also conduct our own subjective science, experimenting with our behavior to find how best to care for our unique body, mind and soul (a dubious concept at best but I like the rhythm of naming all three).
There is no "subjective science". I am very passionate about science and have a problem with anyone trying to construe something that is not science as science. Science is evidence based reasoning. Anything else is not science, call it whatever you want.
I don't want to push you towards any specific practice, but I'd highly encourage you to find the time to do a full retreat that gets you away from your daily routine, computing devices and other distractions. The first retreat I did was almost 2 weeks and I felt palpable withdrawal symptoms until the end of the 4th day when I started to become more calm and able to focus on the meditation. Not everyone feels similar, but I'd recommend against anything one week or shorter because I feel it doesn't give you the time to get in the right headspace to experience the benefits of meditation.
Shorter retreats can be beneficial to experienced meditators who practice on a regular basis and can make the most of a quick, intense period of meditation. But for beginners, it's not enough time to shake you free of your life and let you truly focus.
Shell out some money for a mindfulness course instead for a more professional, guided course instead of apps. We bought some CDs from our instructor (in our native language) as well and ripped them to MP3 residing on our mobile devices. So we don't have to resort to suboptimal apps, which have privacy implications. YMMV really.
a lot of apps are helpful to get you started, but a general example of meditation is being comfortable in good posture while focusing on deep, slow, and calm breaths.
The main goal of meditation is to think of absolutely nothing, and focus in the present.
I always have heard the goal of meditation is not to 'think of nothing' but if a thought enters your mind observe it and let it pass. By 'trying to not think of anything' you are actually thinking of doing just that.
Correct, the way to deal with thoughts and emotions during mindfulness or meditation is non-judgmental acceptance, not with opposing, denying, fighting.
Interestingly, I've been reading that traumatic/bad trips are actually the most healing because they often reveal inner, subconscious struggles and repressed feelings that haven't been adequately dealt with.
There is potential for healing, yes. But what comes up needs to be integrated and dealt with appropriately .. if not, it can mess up things quite a bit.
> doing regular meditation will reduce the chance of bad trips or at least let you deal with them much better.
Perhaps, but meditation as it is often practiced by lay people is one of convenience. That is, this is pleasant, I'll sit for an hour, but not more, because that would become unpleasant (to my knees and back). I don't think this kind of practice does anything to prepare you for the rigors of deep psychedelic experience, where control and choice go completely out the window whether you like it or not.
A one week meditation retreat, with 14 1-hour sittings per day, however (i.e. Vipasana, Zen, etc. style retreats), that will help for sure, though I suspect none but meditation masters can emerge unscathed from the psychedelic deep dive.
A negative anecdote: a friend of a friend of a friend went on a retreat and did actually lose his mind. He needs help and probably will for the rest of his life.
Just putting it out there for some balance. I’ve heard my fair share of positive anecdotes too.
So some guy on the internet says that a friend of a friend of a friend of his lost his mind on Ayahuasca? Based on schizophrenia rates, I suspect pretty much everyone even has a friend of a friend that might catalyze their latent schizophrenia through psychedelics. But, the idea that psychedelics cause mental illness in those that otherwise would have been fine is not supported by scientific evidence[1][2], only anecdotes.
The functional difference between 'causes schizophrenia' and 'triggers latent schizophrenia' to someone who is diagnosed with schizophrenia after ingesting ayahuasca is practically non-existent.
Sure, you can generalize that those with family members who have schizophrenia are at an increased risk of having it rear its head. However, not everyone with schizophrenia gets diagnosed nor do many people have detailed psychiatric evaluations of their relatives to make decisions off of.
I would agree with you if there are people with 'latent schizophrenia' that would never have it become active but for the drug use. But perhaps it's more like someone with a heart defect that dies after some physical exercise -- there was a latent defect that would have revealed itself sooner or later (and schizophrenia is generally diagnosed by one's mid to late 20's). Does the literature have a consensus on which is the case?
Presumably the person with latent schizophrenia would see it emerge at later date even if they didn't take psychedelics. If the drug is only making symptoms emerge earlier, the cost of the trip is only however many years of sanity you had left (say, 5) rather than a lifetime of sanity (~65 years).
My understanding is that 'latent schizophrenia' is a term referring to the predisposition towards developing schizophrenia if certain environmental, social or other stressors trigger it.
It may never truly manifest itself as schizophrenia because of the lack of non-genetic factors involved in the illness.
The nature of schizophrenia isn't that genetics will absolutely determine whether or not someone will develop the disease. One can be diagnosed with prodromal schizophrenia and, with proper intervention, will never be diagnosed as schizophrenic or experience those symptoms again.
To say that the drugs will make symptoms emerge earlier instead of later in life isn't entirely accurate. Those symptoms may _never_ emerge at all, given the right circumstances.
It seems that the 'right circumstances' for those with a predisposition towards developing schizophrenia include never ingesting certain types of drugs.
A person who has "latent schizophrenia" would have quite possibly been "fine", had they not engaged in ingesting a substance that "catalyzes" their predisposed illness. There isn't a reliable way of measuring what would have happened to a group of "psychedelic casualties", had they not taken such substances.
Anecdote or not, and regardless of the causality argument, taking a substance can "catalyze" such conditions to use your wording. There are numerous accounts of people who truly were/are "never the same" after taking LSD or similar substances.
It's important for people to understand this, because of chicken vs. egg. If someone has such a predisposition and isn't aware of it, they might engage in ingesting such substances under the pretense that a substance cannot "cause" a mental illness, meanwhile believing there's no way they could have any such disposition. Contrarily, understanding that these chemicals absolutely are permanently-life altering, regardless of any pre-disposition, is probably the most important thing to consider when weighing pros vs. cons.
Speak to anyone who has taken LSD or similar. Whether good or bad, whether the person is mentally stable or not, the common thread is that changes in mentality/perception from taking these substances are permanent.
Not noticed any permanent changes from LSD (quite a lot of trips and a few heavy ones but nothing truly extreme like a full strip).
I can never as I only have my own experience but I think that a lot of "deep insights" and changes comes from people thinking that that is what should happen. Like when young teens get drunk from non-alcoholic beer.
I'm not saying it does not happen but I think it is rarer than people think it is and it is rare that a trip will introduce permanent change in someones behavior. I think that people feel that it was a great experience and say that now they will live their life differently but that they slowly just return to their normal life and behavior.
It is exceedingly common that a trip will alter a person's perceptions permanently. Such changes likely were the direct result of having taken the substance, and wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Without knowing your specific circumstances, another thing to consider is that it's possible that didn't have a scientific approach to measure the precise mass of LSD that you ingested for any or all of your trips. Perhaps you were "lucky" in the sense that you never (inadvertently) received an extra strong dose. And, your biochemistry might be more tolerant to LSD.
Dosage affects everyone differently, hence the current wisdom to play it safe by scaling up dosage systematically.
I have tripped around 20 times in total; most around 100-200 range with a few around the 300-500 range.
And while I can never know the actual dosages of it when you buy it the way you do my experiences are pretty consistent with how others report their experiences around those dosages.
I am however not a person who is deep into the philosophical aspects of hallucinogens so for me it is about having a pleasant experience and not to try and learning something about myself.
It could be that I'm one of the exceptions or that I don't realize it but to be honest as common as tripping is I don't see many changing their life or outlook after a trip.
We may have grown up in different eras. Everyone I know that has dosed is permanently different, and they all self-recognize this change as being permanent.
The idea that psychedelics are only harmful to people with "latent" schizophrenia is equally unsupported. It's an old canard that people with a one-sided view of these drugs keep repeating.
Hold up, I never said anything about schizophrenia nor did I say ayahuasca caused it.
The 2 articles you linked don’t mention ayahuasca at all. The active compound in ayahuasca is different from in LSD, mushrooms or mescaline. Show me a study done using ayahuasca that proves it has no link to mental illness.
It’s dangerous to dismiss negative anecdotes entirely. Take them as a warning in lieu of real studies being done.
> No current or past history of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, no Bipolar I or II disorder, and no first or second-degree (“A second-degree relative is defined as a blood relative which includes the individual’s grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces or half-siblings.”) relatives with these disorders.3
> “Since the early 1990s, approximately 2000 doses of psilocybin (ranging from low to high doses) have been safely administered to humans in the United States and Europe, in carefully controlled scientific settings, with no reports of any medical or psychiatric serious AEs, including no reported cases of prolonged psychosis or HPPD (Studerus et al., 2011).”1
Sorry to hear that. If you don't mind me asking, out of curiosity, how old was he, what was his prior experiences with drugs and alcohol, and did he have any family history of schizophrenia or similar?
Mental problems like schizophrenia often develop during the ages people start experimenting with drugs (18-25), and while these things can certainly be catalysts, I think the science is still out as to whether such a person would have just developed the disease later on even without the bad trip.
We're actually in the middle of a renaissance when it comes to psychedelic drug research. Research essentially ended after the panic in response to Leary's misuse of drugs, and the association of drugs with counter-culture movements in the 60s and 70s... and then in the 80s and 90s we had the much maligned War on Drugs.
Now that it's become more widely accepted that psychedelic drugs are comparatively harmless next to opioids, there's been a HUGE amount of new psychedelic drug research. I attended Horizons (annual NYC conference on psychedelic drug research) several years ago when I was doing my neuroscience undergrad, and was really impressed with how many new studies were coming out. Interesting enough, a lot of it was focused on psilocybin (e.g. treating anxiety in end of life cancer patients), because LSD still has a bit of a bad reputation after Leary. Probably the most interesting researcher I met was a professor in Europe who was doing fMRI scans of grad students on psilocybin. Nowadays, MDMA has been receiving a lot of attention for its potential to treat those with PTSD.
Anyways, super rambling response, but there's reason to be more optimistic about psychedelic research compared to decades past.
Nothing will happen until psychedelics are rescheduled. It's a travesty that even the "natural" tryptamines (psilocybin/psilocin and DMT) can't be researched more easily.
Not true - psilocybin is being actively researched by Heffter/Usona. They are much more limited by funding than they are by scheduling (at least, in the US).
The main benefit of rescheduling will likely be through easier access to government funding and funding from large foundations.
If you’re very wealthy, you can fund psychedelic research that interests you today - again, the scheduling is not close to being the main limiting factor.
Source: I’ve talked with multiple researchers who are studying psychedelics.
The main barrier to more psychedelic research is funding / $$ - far more than anything else.
In the US, access to research funding is a far larger issue than scheduling. The main benefit of rescheduling would likely be through its indirect benefits on access to funding.
Source: I’ve talked with multiple researchers who are studying psychedelics.
As a practitioner of traditional amazonian spiritual tradition, I and my family drink Ayahuasca on a regular basis and find it to be invaluable, our first line of defense for disease both physical and spiritual.
"the inhibitions on human liver CYP3A4 and CYP2D6 enzymes by those β-carboline alkaloids were studied kinetically. Harmine, harmol and harmane exhibited noncompetitive inhibition on the activity of CYP3A4 with K(i) values of 16.76, 5.13 and 1.66 μM, respectively. These β-carboline alkaloids were also found to be both substrates and inhibitors for CYP2D6. Harmaline, harmine and harmol showed typical competitive inhibition on the activity of CYP2D6
Do you have evidence that ayuhuasca is mutagenic? Inhibition of enzymes is temporary and generally harmless if you are careful not to consume certain drugs while inhibited.
Not I, though Dr. Shulgin says;
"The second question relates to yet another beta-carboline alkaloid, Harman. This is a structural analogue of Harmine that has been stripped of its methoxyl group. It is widely found in plants and foods, and has been shown in experimental animals to be a vasodilator and a hypotensive agent. It also interacts directly with DNA and is thus a possible mutagenic agent."
Courtesy of the wayback machine you can read the article,
I was hoping to gain some insight from the link, but it's just immature and condescending...
I have really grown to resent that tone and it's become very popular in a lot of opinion writing on the web. Seeing it from a psychedelic advocate is not doing his cause any favours.
EDIT: Noticed that you wrote that, so to clarify what I'm saying: Your tone implies that it's absurd for somebody to have an opinion contrary to your own. It's not a healthy contribution to anything.
