Home (ego death and self-control cybernetics)
See also Acid-rock lyric listings, with commentary.
"Sense of unreality of ego in oneself and others" is a common diagnostic point in schizophrenia. It's the feeling that I, or my self inside my mind, doesn't really exist. One usually feels like a real person. On LSD, that feeling is suspended.
The ability to guess the time on LSD is trivial. One can be able to guess the time, while still feeling that time is unreal and frozen. The nature of time is perceived as frozen rather than flowing -- even if a test subject can guess how long a minute is.
These are typical effects of LSD reported commonly by many users.
Altered-state experience flip/flops in several cases.
"I perceived reality more directly."
"I perceived the world as unreal, just mental constructions."
"I gained complete freedom and universal
power."
"I became a helpless puppet, completely controlled by some hidden agency
such as the fates, God, or scientists."
I felt at one, and blissful.
I felt a cosmic conspiracy against me, a hell of paranoia and doom.
Deja vu.
Jamais vu.
All of these dipolar abnormal perceptions are reported commonly by LSD users.
Entering the core of perception, perception becomes more perceptive, perceptive enough to see perception as problematic. Philosophers studying the epistemology of perception should use LSD.
According to the books and online information about LSD, these are standard LSD effects. LSD has many diverse effects.
Much is known about the short-term effects of LSD.
Pupil dilation.
Heart palpitations.
Fingertip tremors - staticy electrical storm in your veins, your fingers as
bright antenna bristling with energy.
Flushed skin.
Feeling of being too cold and too hot; the air is charged -- a humid,
motionless mass.
Mystic insights.
Destabilization of the feeling of personal control; guidance systems break
down.
Sense of unreality of ego in oneself and others; it becomes a struggle to
exist, to resist disappearance of oneself/one's self.
Metaperception: seeing the perceptual layer itself, seeing mental constructs as
such.
Time-freezing; one is trapped between space and time, frozen in the block
space-time universe.
Time-isolation: The past is perceived as just a current mental construct.
Thoughts of things not present are just perceived as memory constructs, as
memory banks unloading -- memories flashing very quickly by.
Coherent thoughts disintegrate; bytes break into bits.
Bright flash when the mind forgets to think and pure awareness feeds back on
itself.
Time-strobing: time is experienced as a static series of 1/20th-second film
frames. Bright images flashing by like windshields towards a fly.
The world appears as a film, image, or painting, a reflection on chrome, rather
than a reality directly perceived. As seen through a fisheye lends, the camera
eye.
Walls and streets shuffle.
Duration 10-12 hours, with a peak located perhaps 30% into the duration of the
trip.
Visions of circular vortexes. These are felt as deadly fascinating attractions; one's gaze is caught and one is held, helpless, mesmerized, as one is pulled, coerced nearer to one's deadly goal until the vortex gains control.
A feeling of battling an enemy within.
Restful, very mildly strung-out feeling the next day -- ability to go to work,
but with some momentary blank-outs.
>The absolute worst trip I ever had was my first, I was 15 and never even smoked pot or gotten drunk. A guy that was living with us told me to eat this piece of paper. It turned out to be a double hit of LSD and I spent the whole night watching TV and laughing my ass of until my Mom came down (OH SHIT!). I was really freaked and she asked me what wa going on and I said "nothing" then she asked me why I looked so funny, I said it was because I was smoking cigarettes and I knew she hated that. She said not to smoke and went upstairs....then my heart started again and I got real emotional and went for a two hour walk and almost got arrested and put in jail. I finally made it home just in time to got to school where I came down real hard in Algebra and threw up in the hall then went home. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship :)
TV is profound - my first session included TV.
You are superior: you did a fairly strong, genuine dose before alcohol or pot! I wasted a lot of time on alcohol and pot before getting real. The first drug you ever took was LSD! You are too fucking cool. Don't you realize that you have ruined all the graduation theories that pot is evil because it leads to "harder" drugs? You screwed up after all that propaganda was so carefully disseminated.
Bridge of Death = mystic ego death as experienced in the mystery cults such as the Eleusian mysteries held at Eleusis, in which the participants partake of the Kykeon beverage and thereby experience loss of control and expanded consciousness.
You can throw up from a strong dose of acid on an empty stomach? Even when you try hard not to. It's true... all those sacramental molecules, expelled, such a terrible waste.
>I was just wondering if it ever happens to anybody else. For the last few times that I've used THC, it seems like my long term memory is working like crazy... I'll never remember something that I did 1 minute ago, but I'll remember things about 5 years ago that I would never remember while being sober. Its really weird, whenever I get stoned, I'll remember an enormous amount of things that are "lame" and aren't special enough to be remembered... It also does it a bit the next morning (or should I say afternoon on some cases.)
This happens on nitrous oxide, like all the peak experiences one has ever had are located at the same fixed point in information-space, the timeless permanent hub around which my linear life seems to spin. To have deja vu is to return to that unnaturally vivid point.
[to do: link to my Rock page, about "manic depression".]
>I've done shrooms once and I loved it. Since then, I've had some emotional problems (I'm sure unrelated) and have been put on lithium for manic depression. If the lithium is successful (which so far it is) I would be kept on the drug indefinitely. I have an interest in tripping again on other substances, but am concerned about the reaction between psychedelics and the lithium. I should probably ask a doctor (and I will if and when I decide to trip again) about the possible problems.
One of the lesser-known psychedelic effects is manic depression. But there are many acid rock songs about manic depression.
Psychedelics probably do aggravate manic depression.
Psychedelics give a confrontation of despair, which is distinct from saying that they simply make you depressed. They often trigger an encounter with the fullness of acedia.
For quotes, go through Yahoo to the Vivarin lyrics site.
"LSD cures depression!" says the latest issue of Psychedelic Illuminations. Ha ha, make me laugh.
Manic depression, loss of self-control, and loosening-and-recombination of mental associations and attitudes and emotions is the fountainhead of creative power.
The Beats had it easy: "The only important question is whether to kill yourself". Our generation, it's "the only question that matters is, when to kill yourself".
Little is known about the long-term effects. We do know that there is no obvious, significant chromosone damage. We think there might be some chance of some people experiencing ongoing schizophrenia, but we know that there is no obvious, major correlation between LSD use and schizophrenia. We think that there are a few mild occasional instances of a certain type of flashback, but the effects are much less sensational that the popular tales.
For rational philosophers, long-term LSD use results in full and lasting ego transcendence, and rational enlightenment. The album _Caress of Steel_ by Rush explores this approach, leading to the question of what to do with life after achieving the highest realization of the truth about our illusory natures as controller-agents or moral agents (cybernetic steersmen as in the song "No One at the Bridge").
Some people have perceptual distortion that lasts for months or years - I have read personal reports of this in the newsgroups (alt.drugs.psychedelics,rec.drugs.psychedelic). If a user is a potential schizophrenic, it is hypothetically possible that using LSD could trigger the onset of psychosis. More scientific research is needed to test this hypothesis. Intense LSD sessions result in flushed skin, dilated eyes, and after the peak, erratic heartbeat, as recorded at the end of the song Cygnus XI on the album _Farewell to Kings_ by Rush.
>I've been shrooming for a little while and was curious as to what the permanent damage of shrooms are to your body/brain. I'm quite aware of LSD's effects, which is why I've switched to shrooms, but are shrooms bad for you, and in what way? It seems that everyone I've talked to knows very little about these mystical mushrooms. I don't want rumors either, I want to know the cold hard facts. Thanks.
Shrooms have mysterious alkaloids that can be bad
for you.
Pure psilocybin is better for you.
Pure LSD is not physiologically harmful.
Sidney Cohen showed that lysergic acid can be considered physiologically "safe"
>According to "Principals of Addictive Pharmacology" LSD causes NO organic brain damage at all in doses less than 2000 micrograms. Doses greater than 2000 mics (about 40 hits since the average hit is roughly 67 mics according to the DEA) causes demyalation of the brain cells. It is important to note that this source is not some flakey stoner or prohibitionist propaganda book, it is a 1993 scientific text used in Neuropharmacolgy courses. Of course, there is the problem of the effects to the psyche. LSD causes a severe imprinting session, and imprinting on your toaster can be detrimential. The stastics for the permenant freakout rate from LSD are 1 out of 7000 for normal people, 1 out of 4000 for psychotics. (Sid Cohen 1973, JNPH) I just get tired of hearing all of the urban myths of strychnyne, permanent insanity, and chromosome damage. LSD is the safest drug available. After all when dealing with toxicological issues the amount of substance vs. the body weight is a good ratio, and it's theraputic index is relatively high. (effective dose/toxic dose)
There is no statistical correlation between lysergic acid and schizophrenia
The incidence of schizophrenia is no higher among users of LSD than among non-users. In a population of non LSD-users, you will find a number of insane people; in a same-sized group of people who have used LSD, you will find the same number of insane people.
Some schizophrenics use LSD, whether they first took LSD before or after their first break.
If LSD research were permitted, more research could be done to strengthen this conclusion.
>My troubles began shortly after my last trip. For years I hoped and prayed that the cause was depression, etc. This can be treated.
>I have been facing this for a long time. I have explored every possibility and read just about every related article available. I am 99.9% certain that LSD, perhaps with some of the pot and shrooms, is the cause.
>And I don't blame my other failings on this; I know that fallacy very well.
>I recently ran across an interesting related site:
http://spunky.paranoia.com/drugs/psychedelics/misc/fried.brain
>This explores the topic pretty sincerely, not something I can say for nearly everything I read.
>I'm skeptical whenver anything that people enjoyed as kids is blamed for obscure later difficulties. Most people's lives are failures and almost anything can be picked out as the cause of this unhappiness. Post hoc, ergo hoc makes us all superstitious.
>I used to know several very long term LSD users, and I have to admit they seemed permanently bent. What they suffered from, however, did not seem to be conventional brain damage but simpoly terminal weirdness as if they had spent so much time over the line, they'd lost forever the ability to take things for granted that is so large a part of what we generously call sanity. For all I know brain chemistry has little to do with it.
There is simply too much counterevidence, too many walking counterexamples.
Furthermore, LSD has barely been tried out yet. The LSD culture we've had so far is not LSD itself; is not the only possible approach to using LSD.
If I have problems, depression, suicide, morbidity, shall I blame LSD? Shall I blame my parents' lack of commitment? How does one distribute blame for one's condition? LSD is the most convenient and potent tool, and the best and most outstanding is always the first to be treated as a sacrificial scapegoat and whipping-boy.
Sure, some people by nature emphasize the wiggy potentials of LSD. But that is their choice; other people take a completely different approach to LSD.
I have seen many casual references to the legions of minds ruined by heavy LSD use. But never a traceable scholarly reference. This well-known group of people, "those whose minds were destroyed by LSD in the 60s", remains an undocumented vague assertion, an urban myth.
Everything they say about LSD is true. It's what you make of it.
If you are great and profound, LSD is great and profound. If you are unimaginative or scattered or unproductive, LSD will amplify those traits.
LSD is a tool to be used wisely or poorly. If you crash a plane because of your own poor piloting, don't blame the plane. The fact that many people have become fucked up through dosing does not address the conditions and techniques and approaches involved.
I have yet to see a complete and balanced assessment of the full spectrum of powers and potentials, the risks and dangers, the dense and complex moral and legal aspects of LSD, not to mention the philosophical and religious ethical issues.
You've got to have a far more sophisticated approach to assessing the merits, risks, and potentials of LSD. There are many, many variables and aspects and conditions.
Jailing all users and forbidding all research is draconian, unjust, cruel and unusual, and ineffective. With scientific, objective research forbidden by fiat, we can never know -- or admit we know -- how to collect valid data to settle the question of brain damage. If at least appropriate scientific research were permitted, we could have a rational debate with potentially a credible conclusion. Such research is in fact opening up.
LSD may cause brain damage. We should legalize research to find out, and acknowledge that LSD is one of the most interesting tools and scientific discoveries of the 20th century and therefore deserves extensive objective investigation that is yet conducted in awe. Currently, to even acknowledge the existence of LSD is to jeopardize your freedom and career, your income and social status. LSD is taboo. What a cowardly, vile attitude; how can it hold up in the face of progress and increasing sophistication of our knowledge?
>Has anyone experienced tightness or pains in their back or neck while on acid?
Using lots smart drugs (stimulants) give you whole-body arthritis. Ephdrine, smart drug pills, diet pepsi (phenylalanine), caffeine, plus regular acid use, = aching.
Drugs are not unnatural, a crutch, a weakness, or illegitimate. Drugs are part of the human experience. Even the 60s hippies reached that consensus. Drugs should be thought of as a tool, and are as much a part of the human experience as tools and technology in general. The electric guitar is a legitimate musical instrument, though it relies on electricity. The electric guitar requires the artificial addition of a non-musical element, electricity. The electric guitar is a legitimate instrument, though some musicians dismiss it as an artificial crutch. Psychedelics are a legitimate mental tool, though some hippies and mystics dismiss them as an artificial crutch.
One characteristic of genius is radical opportunism, an "anything goes" attitude toward everything that they can use as a resource.
Mystic experiences are relevant to general human experiencing, though some rationalists believe it's entirely superstition. Since these phenomena are relatively "abnormal", they are of less interest than the straight world of the modern rational ego. The additions to naked humanity, the artificial tools, the electrified and technologically augmented guitar, and the abnormal states of experiencing, are every bit as much a part of the legitimate human experience as the sober mind, the acoustic instrument, the non-mystic state. One can be proud of one's drug-assisted achievements and fully identify with the use of drugs, just as one is proud to be an electric guitarist, or a computer programmer, or a skilled hunter who uses a gun rather than a bow and arrow. Like all technologies, what matters is how well the technology is used. Everything that humans do is part of the human experience, for better or worse: some strategies may be more or less ethical, but all are pragmatically legitimate. Hendrix was a genius through his mastery of electric guitar gear and through his mastery of drugs (not to deny that he struggled with drugs too). Successful utilization of the psychological or cognitive states that are easily available through drugs can be a fully valuable and great part of a valuable and great achievement. Drugs are not an impure adulterant or crutch, but a legitimate part of the human experience and toolkit.
If rational explanation is inherently metaphorical, a matter of poetry and imagery, the rational goal is to construct the very best possible poetry and metaphors and imagery.
What will happen the day when many sophisticated, free thinking philosophers eat the bittersweet scrolls? They will see these same sort of poetic and metaphorical insights. Will experience and describe as such, the self-defeat of self-constraint, the logical explosion of self-control. I am only clarifying what will come to pass. When philosophy is combined with loose cognition, this is the theory that must result. Emphatically not adopting uncritically the goals and conceptualizations and metaphors established in eastern religion and "spirituality". Above all, a critical reading of all conceptualizations of spirituality, together with a self-made fresh interpretation entirely filtered through modern western philosophical technological methods and conceptual style (eg cognitive science).
This model of self-control breakdown is practically irrefutable and is power-multiplying and is functionally, demonstrably self-coherent. It is a report of common phenomen that are typically encountered when loose cognitive binding is combined with an interest in self-control and the block-universe, worldlines, and free will and determinism. These phenomena reliably happen when loose cognitive binding is combined with philosophical critical interest in self-control -- when thinkers combine the mental mode of loose cognitive binding, the thinking-style of philosophy (rather than spirituality), and a primary concern with self-control rather than general well-being, or peace and happiness. The established approaches differ from this approach in 3 primary ways: they use tight binding rather than loose binding; they use "spiritual" approach (style of thinking) rather than philosophy approach; they are interested in general peace and happiness; I am interested in self-control, which should supposedly enable any goal, such as peace and happiness and various achievements - power, in general. In the future, philosophers and theorists will certainly combine philosophy-thinking and LCB-cognitive-mode. First they will likely try to seek the usual spiritual goal, but however will very soon stumble across the self-control issues. While the theory is thematically complete and closed, I submit these interpretations for criticism -- mine are more of "vision-logic" than strict rational analysis. In fact encourage people to read this theory critically, because there is too little critical originality here; too often I feel my ideas and expressions are vindicated simply because they appear elsewhere. But where my theory is like theirs, it can be misguided like theirs.
By conventional definitions, I am not a monk. I am an independent philosopher or theorist, building an original theory of mystic phenomena. I have had mystic experiences that resonate with Alan Watts' portrayal of Zen enlightenment as insight into self-control cybernetics. My favorite Watts essay is "Zen and the Problem of Control", in _This Is It_. To publish as soon as possible, I work in isolation and try to avoid all distractions.
Mystic knowledge is rational knowledge, but rational knowledge that is informed by personal mystic experiences and analysis of others' mystic or transpersonal experiences. The psychological experiences reported in abduction by aliens involve a hijacking of one's sense of control, a feeling of being taken over that is essentially the same as the Western mystic's sense of being raptured by God. The same psychological circuit is being engaged. Therefore I don't study aliens or God, so much as I study the shared aspects of all transpersonal phenomena, the commonly reported psychological phenomena or experiences. These phenomena can be systematically cataloged, and an explicit system of explanation can be discovered. Personal mystic experiences are not absolutely necessary to study this subject, but they are extremely helpful and powerful guides to direct my attention at what is relevant and worth investigating.
My combinations of ideas are original, but integrate Alan Watts' clarification of Zen, and Ken Wilber's rational systematization of the concept of 'transcendence'. I have also been notably influenced by Douglas Hofstadter's analysis of levels of control. I take a pragmatic approach to explanation that is influenced by the engineering mentality, including the theory of automated control systems. Relativity provides a perfect model of switching from one distinct worldview to another; the shift from egoic thinking to transcendent thinking is comparable because every component of the mental model must be adjusted or "re-indexed" in unison. My lineage is more characterized by engineering than by science. My father's theses are in the fields of social psychology and philosophy. Existential freedom was a starting point for my investigations, and I ran up against its inherent limitations: the limitations of self-control itself.
I live a very monkish life; I am truly a monk but do not fit the superficial stereotype. It depends on how you define 'monk'. The moniker 'Egodeath.com' is completely meaningful: I study the relationship of the individual and the divine with a focus on cybernetic self-control; thus, 'Egodeath.com'. I am against equating 'cyber' with 'computer-based'. 'Cybernetics' properly refers to the general field of communication and control in animals and machines.
The field of cybernetics overlaps with many other fields, and is not the same as the field of information technology or computers. 'Cyber-' is misused, because it properly is used to highlight control and self-control -- not to highlight "computers" in general.
I am disappointed about how eagerly the 1960s explorers were to abandon and "outgrow" that which they had called the most important and powerful discovery ever. They should have more commitment and stamina. There is still time to repent and re-consider and redeem themselves.
This system of philosophy must not be compromised by toning down the unique power of LSD. The theory is necessarily highly controversial. The taboo status of LSD is required to preserve life as we know it: life as deluded egos.
In the workplace, being an acid enthusiast is much more controversial than abortion, race, politics, or sexual orientation. It's like being a murderer or Nazi. Hard drugs are absolutely taboo in the workplace and are not protected by the government -- quite the opposite. It would be reasonable to use a pseudonym to publish philosophy connected with LSD. One cyberpunk developer combines his programming career pages and links to drug sites in an award-winning site, he is not himself a drug writer of drug articles. There are unique difficulties in publishing a work of philosophy and LSD, while also keeping up a professional career. It's easier to write about "entheogens" as an isolated topic, than to build a bridge to highly respected topics. Many people are publishing without harassment, but others are being harassed.
John Perry Barlow encourages drug users to come out of the closet, but he also says to keep a close watch as the digital frontier develops.
The importance and intensity of LSD should not be understated in this Theory, toning down the drug aspect and using euphemisms. Even 'psychedelics' is a distorting euphemism for LSD, because psilocybin, for example, is just not potent or long-lasting enough to support serious, sustained idea development.
Discussions of LSD should not be toned down. Enlightenment is not simply a function of LSD... but pragmatically, LSD is the key to easily opening the doors and setting up a basic cognitive state that supports mystic insight and metaprogramming. For high philosophy, LSD should not be overemphasized... nor underemphasized.
Pop digital culture took the "self-control" out of "cybernetics", creating a new meaning: "computer-based information technology". But LSD puts the concern with self-control back into cybernetics again.
The dissociative cognitive state is highly relevant to philosophy because it enables deep-level symbolic re-indexing of mental constructs. Philosophy without the dissociative state is crippled. The dissociative state is essential tool for studying the mind. As astronomy requires the telescope to make significant progress, so do the epistemology of perception, self-motion, and several other fields of philosophy require access to the dissociative state, to make significant progress. Mental constructs are highly dynamic association matrixes, held together by some degree of binding intensity. Deep re-indexing of mental construct groups (such as concepts of "time" and "change" together) enables a wholesale mental model shift or inversion to another mode. Normally, for convenience, the mind uses linguistic and conceptual associations in a rigid, rutted, and repetitive way; debates are permanent standoffs, because the same cliched assumptions are carelessly adhered to every time words are used. Mastery of semantics and mental association matrixes enables one to release one's assumptions about every single word or concept in an argument, not just a key term in isolation.
It is possible to do serious thinking while on lysergic acid. Actually, the heavy lysergic acid user can only be in a significantly dissociative state for about 10 hours out of a week. The researcher carries on serious thinking mostly during the normal state of cognition, which has relatively rigid binding of mental associations. The serious thinking in the dissociative state works together with the serious thinking in the normal state. By switching between tight and loose cognition while continuing serious thinking the entire time, the thinker gains the advantages of two modes and two perspectives.
I have provided a vivid, rational, and specific systematization of the ego-transcendent insights presented by the dissociative state, and a description of the key aspects of the dissociative state itself. One can read this presentation and rapidly and firmly grasp the basics of the transcendent perspective that the dissociative state provides, without having to have direct experience of the dissociative state.
Ayn Rand claims that philosophy can and should be accessible, because philosophy exists because of people's real, practical needs. She claims that Weimar culture was caused by a certain philosophy, and that collectivism and Nazism are the necessary outcomes of Kant's philosophy of altruism (deny your own needs, live for others). For her, philosophy is urgent; I suppose this is generally true for activist politically-oriented philosophers, but most professional philosophers are elitist - they do not write for THE VULGAR POPULAR AUDIENCE, but for the 5 other people in their hyperspecialty and the "broader world" of the other professional philosophers with lifestyles the same as theirs.
The Writers and Readers series of comic-book format philosophy books is expanding rapidly. They have comic books on Sartre, intro to philosophy, Freud, black history, Islam, Saussure, Structuralism, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, the holocaust, Zen, Ireland, Judiasm, Arabs & Israel, Nietzsche, Foucault, Plato, Buddha, Mao, and more. I recommend this series and this format, explained and justified by Scott McCloud in his landmark comic book, _Understanding Comics_.
I respect the achievements and daring of the hippies, and appreciate their current struggles with career and meaning and responsibility. And I certainly respect the more Experienced ones, especially if they continue to explore the inner heights today and are committed, or at least open, to continuing that exploration. I call them burnt out insofar as they avoid LSD because it doesn't fit into their lives and they think it has nothing to offer them. They think that they are above using it, that they can effectively open their upper doors themselves through running around to the New Age churches and eating healthy food and meditating.
>Iv'e dosed aprroximatley 300 hits of acid and eaten shrooms about 10 times....I really have leasrned alot in my lifetime....The first time I droppeda hit was in 1967...and I saw Dr. Timothy Leary one time...To all you little skater s out thier...the acid you get is shit....we did about 20-30 microdots at a time....gotaa go...........................flashback......
>That's nothing! Man, you're lightweight. I've only been dosing for 10 years, and I've done a whole bible. Anyone doing less than a sheet a year is a dabbler. If you really found it interesting, you would have done at least a sheet a year for these 28 years. That would be 2,800 100 mic hits, which is about 3000 or ten times as much. Why do people set the standard for "Experience" so low? Look, most people spend the vast majority of their time in the default mode of cognition.
I have no advice about changing the world. I only am opening the path forward into rational understanding of the nature of the ego, will, the sense of freedom, and time. All I bring is the ultimate milestone in self-knowledge, not political and social utopia. That self-knowledge is all that I have in mind for others to achieve. But now that I have explained the problems that people are bound to confront in the higher realms, such as the problem of controlling the amplified, unleashed power of the will, people can use the chemical key to be creative and inspired, in general.
>At that measley rate, no wonder no one has done anything interesting with it. Acidheads are their own restrictors, when they say, "it's great -- once or twice -- BUT THEN YOU SHOULD HURRY TO DECRY, DENOUNCE, AND DISPARAGE LSD, and wed yourself to the vague spiritual jargon of the day about "outgrowing it".
> So we can do interesting things with it? Like what? I'm not being flippant, I really want to know. Is the truest journey inward, to connect to the Godhood of the individual, to let the inner light shine forth to pierce the darkness of the world around us? Or does the answer lie in selflessness, to reject the petty cries of the ego, to live to serve others?
That truest journey, the inward discovery, is disappointingly easy, as was the basic harnessing of nuclear power. This discovery can be put into a book in its fulness, according to my model of the ego and world. Selflessness, though, and rejecting the ego, and living to serve others, are less clear. The ego must be upheld, for it to be transcended. There are evil potentials in the desire to be selfless -- this drive for altruism can become perverted and distorted into a death-drive, as discussed by Ayn Rand and Ken Wilber.
I interpret your second option as, "caring for others and for the world, aside from metaphysical comprehension". Can LSD be used for that? In ways, perhaps, but maybe not directly. LSD has its unique potential to affect all pursuits, one way or another. I can't list specifics.
>Do we immerse ourselves in the current drama of the world around us, living and breathing inside the heart and soul of every Brother and Sister, as if 'we' and 'they' are interchangeable parts of the greater Whole? Or do we
That is easy to do. I am not convinced it has much power to dissipate conflict.
>embrace the Unity of Creation by embracing its Duality, picking and choosing right action by careful deliberation and reflection?
>Do we take up arms and fight for what is right,
>or do we greet violence and hatred with loving equanimity, secure in our faith that we are eternal and cannot die, and our death is merely a passing to a wider sphere of Reality? Does it even matter?
I'm reading _The Great Chain of Being: The History of an Idea_ by Arthur Lovejoy. It discusses various ways in which people have struggled with the problem of evil in the supposedly harmonious Unity of Creation. Such Unity implies an attitude of passive fatalism, the anticipation of and acceptance of violence and doom as inevitable. All the responses to these problems have been unsatisfactory.
>You'll never hear me talking about "outgrowing" LSD. You burnt-out old hippies and philistine Xers have more than a thing or two yet to learn from LSD. But you won't find that out, unless you try it. Besides, LSD is not only about teaching you a finite, small group of insights; it's about employing an entire mode of cognition in which you can do anything at all, and continuously create. If you like being straight, then in between weekly sessions, you have 6 whole days to be straight. Isn't that enough?
>Again, you say "do anything at all". So, can you feed the world? Can you stop bigotry? Can you stop the killing and torture that goes on every single day?
I'm referring to the general freedom to run berserk or maintain ones usual restraint.
>What do you create? A new world where kids are loved fully, without limit? A place where people can come together in peace and friendship? Is it a whole new dimension, or even just a few isolated havens in the cracks of society?
At this point, I am focusing my attention entirely on passive philosophizing about self-knowledge. I'm specializing. I don't know what potentials lie beyond my own struggle to publish mystic knowledge about self-control cybernetics. The other problems are outside my scope, as are most problems. What other people can do with LSD, once I make our strange inner logic common knowledge, I don't know. That is a problem to be dealt with in the future, probably by someone other than me.
>There's a lot of rejecting LSD going on here, by its supposed promoters. But offering it so weakly, you merely deceive people into thinking they have "used" it -- when they have barely begun understanding it. And then, at that point, you yank it away from them, saying ENOUGH! YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO BECOME ATTACHED TO IT!
>You all need to radically step up your standards of what "a lot" is, by at least an order of magnitude, if not 2 or 3! You think the race is over, and you haven't even gotten your engine warmed up! You sound like physicists in 1885 saying that everything has been discovered already, and all possible scientific tools have been invented and fully utilized.
>You propose that after looking through a microscope 20 times, you should discard the microscope, and stop looking through it, because it would stunt your eyesight. But after 20 times, you have only begun to familiarize yourself with the basic operation of the microscope.
>What are we looking at, and why?
Self-knowledge about our own cognitive psychology. This is worth studying because it is more personally relevant to everyone than studying other fascinating peak discoveries such as relativity. Understanding our inconsistencies brings us into peace with ourselves and releases us from excessive cognitive dissonance. Self-knowledge actually is knowledge about agency in general, not just one's own unique inner character as in Romanticism.
>YOU HAVE NOT YET BEGUN SERIOUS RESEARCH.
>Research into what?
Exploration of the mind, which can be applied to anything.
>Jesus had a pretty nice message, but, we killed him. Then we took the message, subverted it for the purpose of social control and wealth generation, and two thousand years later, what's changed?
>A country full of monks and temples dedicated to the notion of freeing themselves from the chains of this oppressive world lies crushed, almost all its temples destroyed as the Communist Chinese pillage Tibet.
>I desperately want to believe that there is some hidden power waiting to be tapped, or a Messiah to save us, or Arcturans, or whatever, but my own life and my reading of history just reinforces the idea in me that I am Here , this is my life, this is real, and I've got children to raise and people to reach out to. There is no magic power to save us. It's just a matter of opening our eyes to what is happening around us, and doing the right thing.
>...unless you know something that you can share with us? I really want to hear what you have to say.
We are abandoned, without meaning thrust upon us by a transcendent ruler. This is the price of our personal, individual freedom. This is the inherent nature or state of being autonomous: the isolated ego, forced to be its own Godly governor. I worship myself, but what an empty God. Do I have the power to save the world by creating a social and political utopia? It is hard to believe in Utopia, yet impossible to deny its achievability. We have a responsibility to attempt a Utopia, such as we once thought was automatically guaranteed through historically destined collectivism. It hypothetically could be done, therefore, we should try to do it. This is The Possible. Of course, 'ought' is disconnected from 'is', and there is no reason to attain to The Possible, no divine commandment supporting and justifying that project. The fundamentalist Christians say that we are doomed and predetermined to fail in our attempts at Heaven on Earth. They are therefore guilty of failure to try, due to their innocent faith in the omnipotence of a wrathful god. The scriptures say that it is not possible to construct Heaven on Earth. Are the scriptures a damned lie? We now know just how guilty religion is of violence and destruction. In this respect, such religion, all religion of violence, hinders peace and must be eliminated if we are ever to achieve The Possible.
Grand narratives of progress and salvation are suspect, after a glance at the fate of such programmes. We will most likely continue to limp on into the future, with The Possible taunting us and luring us on. We have made great ethical progress even in this century of evil. What can LSD contribute to the improvement of the external conditions of this world, and to love between actual people? I don't know -- I only suggest that we make a suitably vigorous attempt to find out. I concentrate my main thought not on changing the external world, but on changing the noosphere by solving the reputedly impossible puzzle of self-knowledge. This so-called "self-knowledge" is actually the astonishing adjustment to our conception of self, others, and the world, together. This Transcendent Knowledge is valuable in itself; perhaps it is holds the most precious value. But additionally, it will surely be useful toward other projects and pursuits, if people make the dedicated attempt.
Before you can apply LSD to the greater realm of human pursuits, its first problem naturally arises: the problem of controlling the newly unrestrained will. Only after this problem has been worked through and the psyche re-stabilized, is it possible to routinely apply the most intense altered state to a greater variety of problems. LSD will only become a practical tool after we understand our own potential to become destabilized in will and thought. Bringing this understanding is my central problem.
It all depends. Psychedelics can be good, they can be bad. They can show you Truth, or show you a spirituality as ersatz as any.
The more critical intelligence and breadth of learning you have, the more you are able to use or appreciate this tool. It's essentially a matter of skill. Some people take up this tool and master it; some people just don't have the aptitude or make-up to do anything substantial and constructive with it.
The optimal intensity and frequency of use depends on your particular approach.
The spiritual knowledge found by using psychedelics might or might not match one's expectations about what "spirituality" is really all about.
This issue is a morass of interpretation. All current thinking about both spirituality and psychedelics is predominantly conventional, conformist, insufficiently critical, a mouldering sack of cliches, and thus highly suspect.
Dull minds soon run out of resourcefulness and decide that the things they placed hope in were actually merely curiosities to be put aside.
The risk of reading about LSD is that you might limit your interpretation of your experience. The books contain not only information, but misinformation and arbitrary, endlessly propagated cliches of interpretation. LSD is supposed to explode creativity, yet most people parrot what they have read. Reading acts as a filter that can color your experience. If you read, you should read books written from disparate perspectives. Then you learn to be critical of every idea about psychedelics, and can come up with completely new ideas that you can position in relation to the established ideas.
The world should forget everything it knows about LSD and look with an open mind.
>Another author that may interest you is cyberneticist Charles Muses, a colleague of Norbert Weiner and Arthur Young. He wrote a fascinating book entitled "Destiny and Control In Human Systems" that really blew my mind.
>I really enjoyed reading what you two had to say regarding LSD. I have taken it lots of times a few decades ago. It was quite interesting, to say the least.
LSD-triggered phenomena can be described and explained so vividly that no one will ever need to use LSD. They will then virtually have their own expanse of intense experience and insight. A foreign land can be explained and described so well that you can become an armchair expert through reading, rather than actually first-hand travelling. There will be armchair heads like never before.
The overwhelming challenge of publishing a system of philosophy, or theory, that happens to have a frank psychedelic component:
Formulating an explanation for the most remarkable insights, that are supposedly inexplicable, is much easier than packaging this explanation into a book that needs to be both popular and timelessly excellent. Figuring out the world merely requires cleverness; getting the world to accept, or even consider, the explanation requires genius. Almost all of my thinking during the past two years has been reduced to worrying, to grinding the mental gears, about how to get away with uttering truth.
Our state of knowledge about LSD is stopped at October 6, 1966, when LSD was made illegal and thus driven underground. The research and exploration of LSD that has been done since then doesn't count for much, because it's underground. Even when people have found better ways to understand LSD and the phenomena it unleashes, they have not been able to communicate their findings in a straightforward way.
Most of the best thinkers are driven away from thinking about LSD, so the underground's handling of the topic seems to show that LSD is associated with poor and unrefined thinking. Society has turned it into a taboo; they know that it is the most fascinating thing, but they turn their attitude of rightful fascination into an attitude of shock and block off LSD into the compartment of 'crazy street-people'.
Every thinker who considers the intellectual potential of LSD is likely to agree that it warrants much more study. But for political and social reasons, they attempt to just forget about it. But how long can people pretend to shut LSD out of their minds? The philosophers should be absolutely embarrassed about their head-in-the-sand stance toward what could be their perfect muse, their fountain of inspiration.
The resemblance of psychedelics to insanity are not a reason for philosophers to avoid thinking about psychedelics; this resemblance screams out all the louder that they should take an interest in psychedelics. But they cannot admit this interest to themselves, because their income, their security would be jeopardized.
Fortunately I have little care for income and security, family and respectability. I am finding a way to be completely frank and reasonable about LSD, while also being well-known and respected. I think that this is possible and not that hard; it's just tricky. If I fail to retain my freedom or employability after publishing, I can deal with that and anyone who reasons will see that everything I have spoken is substantiated and reasonable. They will know that they own their own hysteria.
I intend to write the most balanced and reasonable book about LSD phenomena that has ever been written. This will be easy because no other sober philosopher dares. Timothy Leary had other doors to open, other aspects of psychedelics to address. He laid down some of the foundation. He also introduced a cultural style that is not the last word on what LSD is really all about.
I will also write a more balanced book on LSD because it is not centrally about LSD. My main book is going to center on the specific, corrected mental model that mystic insight leads to. This mental model is rational, coherent, and systematic, and re-conceives fundamental concepts such as time, the self, the world, freedom, and the power of will. My most characteristic concern is the notion of self-steering, or self-control cybernetics.
The book needs to be both timely and yet also timeless. A general approach toward writing this way is to read many great books from all ages. I must publish as soon as possible, but the book will only catch hold if it is written in a sober, well-grounded, critical way. It should be medium-short and combine daring, bold vision with the impressive sense of authority. This sense of authority can only infuse my expression if I read well-chosen authors and books. I'm not thinking so much of the specific content that is to be gained from reading many books, but rather the general background and character of superior thought. It's easy to become lost in the canons; there is no time to flounder about. But I must break away from my narrow cultural context.
A key to writing an acceptable philosophy book that includes material on LSD is to speak about it very differently than has ever been done, and to be critical about the necessity of LSD and the power that LSD makes easily available. I may not say that LSD was critical to developing my system of philosophy. I must not be called "the LSD philosopher". LSD must remain almost detached from my system of philosophy, though I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I will be both completely enthusiastic about LSD, and yet also cautious, skeptical, critical, and distanced.
The truth is, there is a way to talk about anything within the walls of institutionalized, establishment philosophy. The trick is, to get away with seriously applying reason to taboo topics, you must approach the topic in the right way. It is even possible to acceptably use LSD innovatively, if you frame your methods the right way. It's possible to spin LSD without spinning it; to succeed at presenting the unpresentable, without distorting it. And it is possible to do all this without studying philosophy for 40 years, full-time. I must have faith that this is all possible. But I have yet to discover exactly how it is possible. The challenge of figuring out how to get away with publishing this is greater than was the challenge of understanding mystic insights and formulating a complete, rational explanation of the higher truth that has previously been only fleetingly glimpsed.
I fear of collapsing when I have achieved my goals -- I am not rooted very securely in remaining alive -- but certainly the difficult, hysterical intellectual context I'm confronted with will keep me from being bored. When a challenge is too easy, the depression of boredom looms. When a challenge is too difficult, the despair of futility looms. In between these extremes of challenge, it is just possible to survive in the narrow band of the attainable challenge. Sometimes I find truth too easy to expose; other times I conclude that it just can't be done in this harsh climate. When my attitude is properly adjusted, the challenge seems just right.
This is how I plan to, in one swoop, reveal all the knowledge that should have been discovered during these 30 years that LSD has been declared unacceptable, taboo, and cause for imprisonment. The reason I confront such a great potential for fame as a theorist is that such a large mass of knowledge was locked away, that it built up a great pressure of that which wants to be known, a pressure that is now ready to burst forth, possibly through a single innovative thinker. If LSD had not been repressed, the world would already have discovered what I have found. My possible fame is only possible because of the illegality of the key to my discoveries. This fame is thus not so much a sign of my own greatness, but a result of the lowness and cowardice of the world. If I am comparatively innovative, it is only because society has been so shamefully insecure and cowardly. Cashing in on these 30 years of missed opportunity is not simply a matter of guts and bravado, but a matter of taking the fullest advantage of the flexibility of communication in order to cirvumvent the barrier of conventional attitudes and taboos.
Many thinkers find the dissociative state extremely interesting: Encyclopedia Britannica, Scientific American, scientists, theologians, philosophers, psychologists, computer scientists, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, DNA Nobel prize winner
To research high knowledge, you should read a wide variety of philosophy, theology, and psychology. You should be prepared to pray if necessary to some hidden compassionate entity who could control your future actions, and doses up to 1000 mics and twice a week. I also promote the technologically influenced interpretation of psychedelics rather than the vague, feeling-oriented intepretation that is too dominant. Despite Alan Watts' genius and clear writing, the hippies have overlooked self-control cybernetics.
Thinking needs to be well-rounded with rationality, not limited to vapid feel-goodism, and needs to be informed by reading substantial nonfiction books. Thinking needs to have a completeness which includes Dionysian compassion and love, but also recognizes the potential insight offered by Apollo's technologically informed perspective.
>What are the best books on psychedelics, such as peyote (especially the Mexican Rituals), LSD, henbane, mushrooms, etc., with good informative facts and such things as the preparation of these drugs. These books may be out of print, but I do have some extremely huge second hand stores near me that would carry all those kind of books.
I don't care for Timothy Leary's books from the 1970s, but the newly reprinted _High Priest_ is excellent and definitely recommended.
For computer-oriented ideas, read his collection of articles, _Chaos and Cyber Culture_.
There's an awesome site to search: a million-title bookstore.
http://www.amazon.com
41 books shown.
The Archaic Revival : Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, Ufos, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and; Terence K. McKenna, Satty; Paperback; $13.50
Carlos Castaneda : Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties; Jay Courtney Fikes; Hardcover; $17.96
Global Perspectives and Psychedelic Poets/Cassetts; Terence McKenna; Audio Cassette; $17.96
History Ends in Green : Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic Revival/Audio Cassette; Terence McKenna; Audio Cassette; $35.96
Mushrooms : Psychedelic Fungi (Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs. Series 1; Solomon H. Snyder; Library Binding; $19.95
Psychedelic Chemistry; Michael V. Smith; Paperback; $17.96
The Psychedelic Experience : A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead; Timothy Leary, et al; Paperback; $8.95
Psychedelic Jungle Greatest Hits; Cramps; Audio CD; $15.00
The Psychedelic Reader : Selected from the Psychedelic Review; Gunther M. Weil, et al; Paperback; $11.65
Psychedelic Shack; Temptations; Audio CD; $9.98
Psychedelic Shamanism; Jim Dekorne; Paperback; $17.96
Psychedelics; Thomas Lyttle; Paperback; $13.45
Psychedelics Encyclopedia; Peter Stafford; Paperback; $26.96
White Rabbit : A Psychedelic Reader; John Miller, et al; Paperback; $12.55
The Acid Trip : A Complete Guide to Psychedelic Music; Vernon Joynson; Paperback; $14.95 (Special Order)
Best of 60's Psychedelic; Various; Audio CD; $10.83 (Special Order)
Children of Nuggets : The Definitive Guide to the Psychedelic 60's Punk Rock on Compilation Albums (Rock & Roll Reference Series, No 30; David Walters; Hardcover (Publisher Out Of Stock)
The Colour of Your Dreams : The Beatles Psychedelic Music; Stuart Madow, Jeff Sobul; Hardcover; $13.00 (Special Order)
The Essential Psychedelic Guide/No 85198; D. M. Turner; Paperback; $12.95 (Special Order)
Eye-Tripping Psychedelics/Volume One Vol 1; Vvtwv Etp1; VHS Tape; $19.99 (Special Order)
Eye-Tripping Psychedelics/Volume Two Vol 2; Vvtwv Etp2; VHS Tape; $19.99 (Special Order)
Eye-Tripping Psychedelics/Volumethree Vol 3; Vvtwv Etp3; VHS Tape; $19.99 (Special Order)
Kaleidoscope Eyes : Psychedelic Rock from the '60s to the '90s (Citadel Underground Series; Jim Derogatis; Paperback; $15.26 (Not Yet Published -- On Order)
Make Your Own Drugs : Psychedelic Chemistry (Criminology Series; M. V. Smith; Hardcover; $79.95 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Chemistry; Paperback (Special Order)
The Psychedelic Experience; Paperback; $8.95 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Furs; Psychedelic Fur; Audio CD; $10.83 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Furs : All of This and Nothing; Psychedelic Furs; VHS Tape; $14.98 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Microdots of the 60's Vol 3; Various; Audio CD; $14.98 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Mind Trip; Various; Audio CD; $10.98 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Mind Trip; Various; Audio Cassette; $7.83 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Monographs and Essays; Thomas Lyttle; Paperback; $20.00 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Monographs and Essays; Thomas Lyttle; Paperback; $20.00 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Monographs and Essays (Psychedelic Monographs and Essays Series; Thomas Lyttle; Paperback; $17.98 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Monographs and Essays (Psychedelic Monographs and Essays Series; Thomas Lyttle; Paperback; $17.98 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Reflections; Lester Grinspoon, James Bakalar; Hardcover; $36.95 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Shack; Temptations; Audio Cassette; $7.33 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Sundae : Best of Vanilla Fudge; Vanilla Fudge; Audio Cassette; $10.83 (Special Order)
Psychedelic Sundae : The Best of Vanilla Fudge; Vanilla Fudge; Audio CD; $16.98 (Special Order)
Thanatos to Eros : 35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration Ethnomedicien and the Study of Consciousness; Myron J. Stolaroff; Hardcover; $22.95 (Special Order)
Vh-1 My Generation : Psychedelic High; Various; VHS Tape; $14.99 (Special Order)
19 books shown.
Acid Dreams : The Cia, Lsd and the Sixties Rebellion; Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain; Paperback; $11.65
Lsd : Still With Us After All These Years; Leigh A. Henderson, William J. Glass; Hardcover; $20.70
Lsd : The Age of Mind; Bernard Roseman; Paperback; $2.00
Lsd : Visions or Nightmares? (Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs. Series 1; Solomon H. Snyder; Library Binding; $19.95
Lsd Psychotherapy; Stanislav Grof; Paperback; $20.66
Practical Lsd Manufacture; Uncle Fester; Paperback; $17.06
Storming Heaven : Lsd and the American Dream; Jay Stevens; Paperback; $12.60
Summer of Love : The Inside Story of Lsd, Rock & Roll, Free Love and High Times in the Wild West; Joel Selvin; Paperback; $11.65
Summer of Love : The Inside Story of Lsd, Rock & Roll, Free Love and High Times in the Wild West; Joel Selvin; Hardcover; $20.66
50 Years of Lsd : Current Status and Perspectives of Hallucinogens : A Symposium of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, Lugano-Agno (Switzerland,; A. Pletscher, Dieter Ladewig; Hardcover; $75.00 (Special Order)
Lsd; Library Binding (Publisher Out Of Stock)
Lsd; Paperback; $4.60 (Special Order)
Lsd : A Total Study; D. V. Siva, Sankar; Hardcover; $69.95 (Special Order)
Lsd : My Problem Child, Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism, and Science; Albert Hofmann; Paperback (Publisher Out Of Stock)
Lsd Psychotherapy; Paperback (Special Order)
Lsd Psychotherapy : Exploring the Frontiers of the Hidden Mind; Stanislav Grof; Hardcover; $34.95 (Special Order)
Lsd, Marijuana, Yoga, and Hypnosis.; Theodore Xenophon Barber; Hardcover; $45.95 (Special Order)
Stp Not Lsd /Nr; Angry Samoans; Audio Cassette; $9.85 (Special Order)
Triplepoint - Lsd in Group Therapy : A Life Transformed; Trevor Trueheart; Paperback; $19.95 (Special Order)
Fate
alcoholism
_Alcoholics Anonymous_ reveals interesting patterns if you search for "control". Alan Watts was alcoholic, also acid rock pioneer Ozzy Osbourne.
Self-control
_White Bears and other Unwanted Thoughts_ -- a real find. About self-control problems in the general, comprehensive sense -- for example, not just the difficulty of dieting.
> the nature of freedom
_Freedom in the Making of Western Culture_ -- Orlando Patterson. It's about the almost universal rule of slavery until recently.
the philosophy of representation
essential timeless questions that you are shown in divine psychosis.
ethics of drug laws
Friedman and Szasz - On Liberty and Drugs
Bakalar and Grinspoon - Drug Control in a Free Society
Husak - Drugs and Rights
Recommended/accessible: Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do - the absurdity of
consensual crimes in a free society - Peter McWilliams.
On LSD reading, I was impressed with the newly printed Leary book, High Priest. He has several passages describing the very close calls they had in the Good Friday experiment, at home during his daughter's slumber party, and another early session. Reading this book shows you how brash Leary was -- he knew firsthand, and told so, of the extreme risk of going out of control. Subjects and friends, explicitly transgressed the constraints of normal middle-class behavior, and recognized this fully and clearly. They would veer off the sidewalk threatening to walk into traffic. The book has some 5 stories telling of how the trippers would provoke Leary, by explicitly going outside their normal constraints -- wielding knives, threatening him and others in various ways, with an attitude of "you can't stop me, I cannot be controlled, and I know it and you know it."
This obsession with transgressing control is a key element of the LSD phenomena.
I hate some of Leary's other books -- at least, I'm alienated from much of his style, including the emphasis on sex and on consciousness of your cells. But that early book still carries a little of the Harvard seriousness. The later books fell apart into too much goofiness. I think that is mostly because he is a member of the Silent Generation. (You can say "boomers" or "Xers", but "silent'ers"?) They acted like adults when they were young, but then youth became "in" during the sixties... when they were old. Much of the goofiness of the New Age subculture is due to the obsession with acting child-like. So I recommend the new edition of _High Priest_.
I caution against reading too many drug books. There is a point of diminishing returns.
I highly recommend _Psychedelic Illuminations_ zine. I wonder if they finally have a web. Search it out in other zines, High Times, Mondo, the usual places where all the other underground material is found. Subscribe to it.
Also, all those in the know are anxiously awaiting the re-release -- the first real, major printing -- of _The Road to Eleusis_ by Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann. This book argues that psychedelics were historically both entheogens and the motive force giving rise to philosophy in ancient Greece. I haven't seen the book. They found LSD crystals in the vessels used in the Eleusian Mysteries. This is highly plausible, based on the descriptions that have been tentatively pieced together about what went on in these mysteries.
Nakamura - _Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples_ -- shows strong differences between thinking lumped together as "Eastern". Good material. Major sections divided into India, China, Tibet, Japan.
_The Drug Controversy and the Rise of Antichrist_ - argues that drug-war oppression could be a key to the ascent of a global dictator - short book.
_Extraterrestrials in Biblical Prophecy_ -- cool cover. Gets to the heart of this Space Brother Jesus business. Substantial, as are all the books in this list.
_Alien Identities -- Insights into Modern UFO Phenomena_ -- interesting chapters about flying machines in Indian Vedic scriptures. Altered states in abductions. Substantial, interesting, entertaining, educational. Mind-expanding. These above two are among the more worthwhile UFO books for philosophers and religious researchers.
> philosophy of religion
John Hick - _An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent_
_Zen, Drugs, and Mysticism_ -- Zaehner (also, his previous book) -- important books to be aware of -- a response (1972) to the assertions about LSD being instant religious experience. He's a skeptic, but covers interesting topics -- maybe I'll read more of it. Anyway, more of this open-minded inquisitive skepticism is needed -- too many people accede to rutted attitudes, either closing their mind against the usual assertions entirely, or buying into them hook, line, and sinker, mindlessly and uncritically repeating the usual terms and memes and especially, attitudes, like a synchronized chorus-girl or cheerleader.
epistemology
semantics
philosophy of language
other domains which I have listed before
revealed nature of various phenomena involving the self as a dynamic mental construct
_The Mind's I_ -- edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett -- must-read. This shows more of Hofstadter's real motivating interest for writing Godel Escher Bach.
self-control
>master-slave psychology
Erich Fromm's _Escape from Freedom_ is about dominance-and-submission psychology. It's a classic and is representative of the struggle that we are now passing through at this point in the history of consciousness, according to Wilber. The struggle of our time is the existential one, and the counselling of our time is existential psychology/philosophy. The ladder up from this, the next mode of thinking, required to get through this, is 'vision-logic'. _Escape_ is about the psychology of the then-current rise of Nazism. He mentions its similarity to hierarchical religion, in which the leader submits to God or Nature, and individuals at each level submit to those above, and dominate those below. This relates to masochism (submission) and sadism (oppression). It's interesting to compare this to _The New Satanists_ by Linda Blood -- a pulp expose of Satanism that points out a shared interest in Nazism. Hierarchical religion (particularly Catholocism), Nazism, and Satanism have something in common having to do with dominance and submission of the will. The same trend is seen in authoritarian guru-worship -- for which, read the analysis of the 60s-through-80s cults, _Divine Madmen_. The dynamics of "the will" are exposed by LSD. Look out for that term, 'the will'. Freedom of the will, the will, self-control, freedom, fate... these are the biggest words, the most central words.
Leonard Peikoff -- _The Ominous Parallels_ -- claims Nazism is founded largely on philosophy and is to be explained by it -- Kant's philosophy of altruistic ethics of morbid anti-ego attitudes (disparage yourself, exist for others) and on radical idealism ("there is no truth or reality, just our will and consensus"). The gripping thing is, these parallels are even more true in today's postmodern scene, which is very similar to Weimar Germany. Probably the most compelling Ayn Rand associated book.
A thousand books on peace and love are available, but it's really questionable whether they are worth reading. Too often, they are clouds of feel-good moralizing and wishful thinking -- which is good, if done right, but for actually figuring out the mysteries of the psyche, I can't recommend them as useful.
>the subtle shift of mental associations associated with self, action, and world
I took a course in semantics which was crucial for my insights into the shifting understanding of the self-concept. We used S.I. Hayakawa's _Language in Thought and Action_, a concise presentation which I can recommend.
> schizophrenia
For schizophrenia, there's Louis Sass: _Madness and
Modernism_ -- excellent cultured comparison of the two.
Also his _The Paradoxes of Delusion_ comparing Wittgenstein's warnings about
radical solipsistic skepticism, to the lived state of schizophrenia. Both
emphasize schizophrenia as exagerrated cognition, not as dulled,
impoverished cognition.
For an analysis of concrete political developments in Rome and Jerusalem, there is an intellectual fundamentalist who believes in a predestined future. I don't know of books from other religious points of view that attempt to predict specific events. These books are as underground as LSD books. In some gospel book stores, they keep them behind the counter. They are by Dave Hunt. One is about the Roman Catholic Church -- a cosmic conspiracy to re-create the Roman Empire with the Pope at the top of the global government. The other is about the religious scriptures, prophecies, and beliefs that are behind middle eastern politics. _A Woman Rides the Beast_ and _A Cup of Trembling_, respectively. _A Woman_ has interesting research showing the similarities of the attitude towards the Jews held by the Catholic Church and the Nazis -- and a thick bibliography.
split meanings of terms into two, such as 'could'(1)
and 'could'(2), or 'I'(1) and
>'I'(2)
divine intervention.
The densest double-entendres and allusions to LSD phenomena are in the Rush albums _Caress of Steel_, _2112_, _Signals_, and other mid-era albums (not the first, or the mid-to-late 80s). Metallica has a lot, particularly on _Ride the Lightning_. Slayer explores the murderously transgressive side in their latest _Divine Intervention_. The Beatles had some of the cleverest allusions way back on _Rubber Soul_. Kansas' _Point of Know Return_ is a solidly acid-lyrics album. Queen's _News of the World_ has several songs, and a cover showing a robot out of control, who "knows no morality." Really, it's better to identify acid-alluding songs rather than albums, because few albums have as many as 50% such lyrics. The Led Zeppelin albums starting a little with III but mostly with ZOSO through _Physical Grafitti_ are packed with allusions to psychedelic phenomena. These are all classic albums that got a large degree of their richness and lasting value through the influence of LSD. More recent artists such as Nine Inch Nails also exhibit standard coding of lyrics so as to densely allude to ego death, mind crash, helplessness, fate, paranoia -- the standard signature themes communicating a shared special set of experiences. These are all available on the Lyrics Web http://archive.uwp.edu/pub/music/lyrics/ A new type of resource, that happens to make available the scriptures of the authentic mystery school of our time. Naturally, citing these bands has nothing to do with their "coolness" -- the point is, how densely the lyrics allude to the standard psychedelic experiences such as time freezing, fatedness, loss of control, exagerrated freedom gone haywire, paranoia, and ego death.
>the practical philosophical questions that lead to the highest knowledge.
>kneeling in humble supplication to the ruler of time and fate
>apprehended your
>inherent inner aspect of weakness and delusion of autonomous
>ego-power, you have not searched vigorously enough.
>rational yet intuitive vision-logic
Vision-logic: a concept promoted by Ken Wilber. _The Atman Project_ is the best place to start. Short, good chapter on schizophrenia vs mysticism. This reasonably concise book lays out Transpersonal Psychology, which combines western psychological development from immersed infant consciousness to the alienated, isolated existential modern ego, with the Eastern "spiritual" development from the ego to unity consciousness (which preserves the differentiation of the ego, unlike popular regressive/immersive tendencies that tend to dissolve the ego into nature or the group). This system also builds rationality, while adding vision. These days, it sounds like he is more amenable to the idea that ultimate reality is rationally comprehensible, which I am confident is the truth. His latest is the poorly titled _Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality_ -- $40. It is incredible, though unnecessarily long and repetitive. It is about combining hierarchies of knowledge, culture, psyche, etc. into a metasystem of holarchy. Instead of that one, you might wait for his next -- a history of ideas, next February.
Wilber is the most important theorist of human development and I highly recommend him. Realize, though, that his first books, including the excellent _No Boundary_, used a model of "descent from higher to lower", rather than the better metaphorical scheme of "looping up from naive unity, arcing out to isolation, returning back down to enlightened unity by moving forward around the loop".
Alan Watts knows some things that Wilber doesn't -- such as the logical contradictions involved in self-control. There are some crucial passages in _The Way of Zen_ about the cybernetics of self-control. But the single best thing to read is in his most accessible book: _This Is It_, including chapters on LSD and a crucial chapter on Zen and the Problem of Control. His analysis may have influenced Douglas Hofstadter's _Godel, Escher, Bach_ -- recommended. Note that Hofstadter is interviewed in a current or recent _Wired_ issue, in an interesting interview about the motives of that book. I suspect he may have tripped -- he is concerned with signature themes of self-control, Zen, determinism, and the sense of freedom.
_Elbow Room_ is a good summary of the free will debate. Daniel Dennett zeros in on the phrase "could have done otherwise." It sounds like he is about to realize that fatalism -- the forgotten and grossly misunderstood ancient position -- is a sounder, smaller set of propositions than conventionally-defined "determinism". Fatalism frankly denies that one could have ever done otherwise, in every thought, and every feeling, including the feeling of freedom. So does determinism -- but fatalism is more firm about this, while remaining silent about whether the future can be predicted and whether every act is laid out in an orderly way. Determinism says the future will be created by a chain of actions. Fate says it is "now", already, forever, in existence. I am still looking for good books about Fate. There aren't many -- it's a lost topic that I am excavating. _Moira: Fate, Good, and Evil in Greek Thought_ is pretty good.
There are too many "pretty good" books, not enough great ones.
>the rapture or raping of the power of self-control or self-guidance. This is the discovery of our ultimate potential as autonomous moral agents -- the potential for self-deconstruction of self-control, in which ego power expands to the point at which it cannot control its own freedom. The will eludes itself through time. While the metaphysical theory of fate and changelessness remains hypothetical, there does exist a model of self-guidance which is remarkable in that it blows your mind in the experience of ego death (and ego transcendence).
>systematically study and interpret the most remarkable human experience: the phenomenon of ego death, and the associated high philosophical insights, not excluding mania and despair. The other
>the key to mature self-understanding is none other than Delysid.
But it must be combined with mental cultivation, inquisitive skepticism, and far more Delysid than those who claim that once a year is substantial enough. "It takes dynamite to get me high" -- "too much is just enough"
I want to urge people to be "generally well-read" but I'm afraid they'll end up reading the random junk or sawdust-dry stuff I see on most shelves. I think that almost anyone found find fascinating and entertaining books and zines in my library, whatever their interests, but that most collections either are more ... aw hell, basically, "read lots of cool books" is what it boils down to. I won't even try to formulize this. Maybe the best example is this: reading ordinary Protestant books would be very boring. But some of the most scholarly ones are interesting, or the most extreme ones, such as Dave Hunt. Avoid the bland.
Walter Truett Anderson has another great book out on postmodernism. His first, highly recommended, is _Reality Isn't What It Used To Be_. [see my Books/Tables of Contents page] The new one is _The Truth about Truth_, a collection of the best writings on postmodernism, with a lot of his commentary.
Robert Anton Wilson's books center on the transcendence of worldviews, or "reality tunnels". They are highly readable and entertaining, not heavy reading at all. Sometimes they are in the metaphysics section of the bookstore. A similar, excellent book is _The Universe Next Door_ [see my Tables of Contents page]. I was asking for books on drugs at the gospel Christian book store, and stumbled across it in the Current Issues section. It has information about drugs. James Sire. Chapters on Theism, Deism, Naturalism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Eastern Pantheistic Monism, and New Age. It's about world views. Highy recommended for heads who have minds.
>I am currently a high school senior wanting to major in Philosophy. My question is: are there any jobs that are Philosophy orientated?
>There does seem to be one more way to get a "Job" as a philosopher. That is to come up with a unique perspective on life and get someone to publish your paper.
>This perspective, ideally, should be able to argue or support its point of view in any forum. It would be able to stand off attacks from all sides. It would be a new way to look at the entire universe. It would serve as a basis for moral action, and explain mans relationship to other men and to the universe. It would show where the Logical/Scientific view of the world and the Metaphysical/Non-Logical views of the world in accord and where ?
>Now this may take 20 or 30 years of independent study but it would be worth it in the end.
>One problem you would face when trying to get published would be the fact that your findings may very well be sort of like stepping on the toes of the very people whom you are trying to get interested in your ideas, the Philosophy Professors themselves. So who could you show your new ideas to? What publisher would be willing to gamble on your new ideas?
It doesn't need to take so long. I've taken 10 years to do what you described. It took me 2 years to build up a fundamental insight, and 8 years to refine it and educate myself in the relevant fields in order to connect my core ideas to the established ideas. I at first thought that 5 years would be enough. I can see how 30 years is more appropriate.
My weakest point is the "basis for moral action". That's a tall order, particularly since moral agency is essentially illusory.
>This perspective, ideally, should be able to argue or support its point of view in any forum. It would be able to stand off attacks from all sides. It would be a new way to look at the entire universe. It would serve as a basis for moral action, and explain mans relationship to other men and to the universe. It would show where the Logical/Scientific view of the world and the Metaphysical/Non-Logical views of the world in accord and where
I really like how you frame the problem. But this approach is that of systems-philosophy, which has been very depasse. Program-philosophy has been dominant in the 20th century -- everyone finds a guru and works on a tiny sliver of their Program. However, in _The Highroad around Modernism_ Neville claims that the American pragmatic tradition has a rich, unbroken history of non-modern, system-philosophy upon which we can and should draw.
Speculative metaphysics is permitted once more, but it must tie in with the logical/scientific worldview.
Life-plan advice for getting a philosophy PhD
>I'm currently in college and am contemplating studying philosophy. The only hang-up is that I'm not sure what I could do with a degree in Philosophy. I don't really want to be a teacher in the educational sense...I don't really want to write books and stuff, but maybe for some kind of journal or something.
>What alternatives are you looking at? If you don't really have any plan in mind, it doesn't really matter what undergraduate degree you get. If you're after money, law schools are very fond of students who did their undergraduate work in philosophy, and I wouldn't be surprised if graduate programs in business had a similar attitude. If you're after something else, what is it?
I recommend that you study philosophy at the most prestigious university that you can get into, and then get an MBA at the most prestigious university you can get into. Get good grades in the philosophy program and read thousands of books, closely. Become a high-level manager in the high-tech industry. By then the web will be way happening with lots of opportunities to participate in high-level online discussions of philosophy, on your own time.
Plan to work 50 hour weeks as a manager plus another 10 hours of thinking about work, reading business materials, and investigating business opportunities.
I recommend this to you because you will have the fulfillment of great philosophical knowledge as well as a large and stable income to buy a house, cars, travel, and college education for your kids.
There won't be dignified opportunities to teach college until the baby boom echo turns 18 around 2010. In this approach, your complete focus during undergrad program would be philosophy, and it would be your avocation the rest of your life.
College demographic trends very bad for becoming a philosophy professor
>I am currently a high school senior wanting to major in Philosophy. My question is: are there any jobs that are Philosophy oriented??
It's all a matter of demographics. With the baby bust now at college age, there aren't enough students to keep the boomer profs employed teaching college, so any newcomers -- young boomers or old Xers -- don't have a chance in hell of getting tenure now. In some number of years, when the echo of the baby boom is college aged, then more tenure-track positions should open up.
There are practically no tenure positions available now. There are a few low-class temporary teaching positions available, in very bad conditions.
Boomers waited until the last minute (or longer) to have children. These screaming brats are now 3 years old. They will be 18 in 15 years -- 1995 + 15 = 2010. So, in 2010, there will be a demand for more college teachers. Supposing you are 20 today, you will be 15 years older then -- or 35, which is fine. Supposing you are 30 today, you will have to wait til you are 45, in 2010, to have a "permanent" job teaching college.
http://www.hyperreal.com/drugs/faqs/FAQ-LSD
An impressive number of FAQs, organized and readable
For most people, it would be difficult and time-consuming to find information about mushrooms. You may think it's easy to go to a bookstore or library and locate or order a book. But many skills are necessary to collect information. Many people are unfamiliar with the world of books and research. But online, any young person who is mildly computer literate can take a tv-channel-flipping approach to research. Click and point.
Some newsreaders such as Netscape allow you to click right here in this message: for a thorough introduction to LSD right now, click here:
Immediacy makes all the difference. Your pessimism is based on assumptions about ease-of-use that are based on a scheme that's is now, as of today, superceded. Sit back and watch the intelligence increase.
URL for MAPS psychedelics research group
Multidisciplinary Association For Psychedelic Studies
The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies (MAPS) is a 501 (c) (3)
corporation chartered in 1986 as a membership-based research and educational
organization.
Currently numbering 1000 members, MAPS focuses on the development of
beneficial,
socially-sanctioned uses of psychedelic drugs and marijuana. Such uses may
include
psychotherapeutic research and treatment, treatment of addiction, pain relief,
spiritual
exploration, shamanic healing, psychic research, brain physiology research and
related
scientific inquiries. MAPS pursues its mission by helping scientific
researchers design, obtain
governmental approval for, fund, conduct and report on psychedelic research in
human
volunteers. MAPS also publishes a quarterly publication that is sent to its
members as well as
a large number of government policy makers and academic experts.
If you are interested in information about
research with psychedelics around the world, MAPS
offers free access to all its past newsletters. A search function is under construction
that will
permit you to locate articles by specific drug, researcher, or any word you
choose. At the
present, each issue, and the articles it contains, is listed by date.
Another upcoming addition to this web site is an
electronic bibliography of scientific papers
related to psychedelic drugs. The project is being funded by MAPS, in
association with the
Heffter Research Institute and the Albert Hofmann Foundation. When completed in
early
1996, this project will be available for free on the MAPS and Heffter Research
Institute web
sites. The bibliography will be searchable by key word.
About MAPS
MAPS Newsletters And Publications
Late Breaking News
Membership / Subscription Information
MAPS' Mission Statement
Other Sites of Interest
Conferences
MAPS' Art Gallery
MAPS Inc.
1801 Tippah Avenue
Charlotte, NC 28205
USA
Rick Doblin, President
tel: 704-358-9830
fax: 704-358-1650
email: sylvia at maps.org (Sylvia Thyssen, Networks Coordinator)
Why don't the scientists do enough formal research on this to establish factual knowledge regarding such questions? There is no reason to guess on such a question.
I have seen research showing that it's much longer than an hour. But the factoid goes around that it disappears almost in minutes. Maybe they're measuring different things.
The promising outlook for the Web for alternative information exchange
http://hyperreal.com/drugs/faqs/FAQ-Psychedelic-Experience
Reading this FAQ via the Web, I feel that the Web has come of age. I disagree with many of the views in this particular document, but it is a very rich collection of specific descriptions of psychedelic effects. Page after page of valuable hard, cold information.
There is potential to integrate the online discussions and the web, to raise the quality of both.
It's hard to decide whether to surf the Web or read and write postings, but those activities are rapidly converging.
My greatest hope is that this rich, open flow of information will enable people to break out of the cliches of establishment propaganda and the cliches of the unimaginative underground, to forget everything we "know" about psychedelic phenomena and the realm of higher knowledge that psychedelics make easily accessible. There are interpretations of psychedelics that the Hippies, Establishment, and New Agers have not thought of, and the Web will help us break out of these ruts of thinking.
The Web will make it easy to be a well-read, critical thinker, and will encourage people to write postings that are so substantial, they can be published in organized archives. Some sort of ratings mechanism similar to Point's ratings could make this instantly take off.
One service we can each do is to write more clearly when posting, remove the less valuable parts of your postings, and put your best postings into Web archives. There are also a lot of newsgroup postings and FAQs that need to be converted from plain ASCII to proper HTML.
>I'd like to see an alt.mushrooms news group and possibly an alt.drugs.mushrooms or alt.drugs.psychedelics.mushrooms news group added.
I agree that LSD and psilocybin should not be forcefully lumped together. I prefer to distinguish LSD postings from mushroom postings. The two groups could then take on their own character. I would like to see the difference in character. The LSD group would have more intensity.
Given current conditions, if you split alt.drugs.psychedelics (and rec.drugs.psychedelic) into alt.drugs.lsd and alt.drugs.mushrooms/psilocybin, as well as .dmt and .mescaline and so forth, the LSD newsgroup would naturally become dominated by discussion about 75%-100% alteredness, out of the full potential to be in the psychedelic state, whereas the mushroom group would be clearly characterized by the goal of 25%-75% alteredness.
The mushroom newsgroup would fall halfway between the THC newsgroup and the LSD newsgroup. The THC newsgroup would be very mellow, with only hints of psychedelic intensity. The mushroom group would be moderately intense. The LSD group would be extremely intense.
The THC newsgroup would be the most intense if everyone smoked pure THC and ate hashish.
The mushroom newsgroup would be most intense if people swallowed large quantities of psilocybin capsules (equivalent to a greater quantity of typical-strength mushrooms than you would care to eat, or a substantial number of the very most potent mushrooms).
Assuming that THC users limit themselves to smoking buds, and psilocybin users limit themselves to taking a few average-strength mushrooms, and LSD users limit themselves to taking a few hundred micrograms, all 3 of these newsgroups would be moderate, rather than intense. But the THC group would be the most moderate; the LSD group would be the most intense, and the mushroom group would be in the middle.
So intensity reflected in the postings is not only a function of which drug, but also of the concentration and thus the amount of the drug consumed.
Those who prefer an intermediate psychedelic state would go off into the mushroom newsgroup. Those who prefer the highest intensity state would naturally gather in the LSD group. They would of course cross-post and visit both groups.
I am in favor of creating an LSD group and a mushroom/psilocybin group. Actually, the hierarchy could be:
alt.drugs
alt.drugs.caffeine
alt.drugs.chemistry
alt.drugs.culture
alt.drugs.hard
alt.drugs.leri
alt.drugs.pot
alt.drugs.pot.cultivation
alt.drugs.psychedelic
alt.drugs.psychedelic.lsd <-- new
alt.drugs.psychedelic.mushrooms <--new
alt.drugs.usenet
Or, the new groups could omit the 'psychedelic' level, like the pot group:
alt.drugs.lsd <-- new
alt.drugs.mushrooms <--new
The shorter version is easier to type. But consider this: there will be fewer irrelevant cross-postings if the group name is longer and harder to type.
If pot gets its own specific group, then so can LSD and mushrooms.
Other possibilities:
alt.drugs.psilocybin
alt.drugs.acid
alt.drugs.delysid
Note the advantage of '.delysid': much lower profile than '.acid' or '.lsd'. Delysid is a trademarked product name. There is a "prozac" newsgroup.
Or, you could differentiate in terms of intensity, rather than by particular psychedelic drug:
alt.drugs.psychedelic.moderate
alt.drugs.psychedelic.intense
This would make sense because the intensity with which people trip is more important than which drug they use. Full-intensity mushroom users and full-intensity LSD users might have more in common with each other than with those who use whichever drug, moderately.
Another consideration is how one would cross-post between these new groups and rec.drugs.psychedelic.
Having finer-grained distinctions among drug topics would reduce the number of postings that are irrelevant to people who are especially interested in a particular drug. The more drug groups there are, the harder it is to excessively cross-post poor-quality, noisy, irrelevant threads. I'm all for cross-posting, when done properly so that it enhances both groups in substantial, constructive ways. Having an inconvenient number of drug groups would discourage unwarranted cross-posting.
I am greatly in favor of an LSD-specific newsgroup.
If psychedelics are so inspirational, how come the psychedelics newsgroups (and email lists and many magazine articles) are so vapid and filled with worthless chit-chat, trivia, and flaming?
Doesn't anyone have anything interesting to say on this "psychedelics" newsgroup? Where is the evidence of the reputed inspirational quality of psychedelics? What lightweight poseurs. It's a waste of my time to compose these posts. What's in it for me, besides familiarity with the lame status of pop drug use? Have I ever gotten a single speck of inspiration here? It's lonely at the top. 10 tabs every 4 days, at midnight, with bong hits at the peaks and inspired acid rock on the headphones... this is the little league here.
If you had any Experience worth talking about, you would all be sharing your insights into the human condition, the mysteries of Fate overpowering morality, the terror of the Eleusian mysteries. What's the average age here, anyway -- 12? Jeez. No one has substantial experiences to talk about. I have no hope of this situation changing. People consider 100 mics, a few times, to count as substantial experience. The clock is ticking, the evening has eluded me again, and I don't know whether to commit to posting here or not. I would post good material here if other people would. That's what it boils down to. I guess the deal is, the big league players keep silent; the tots think that their standards are significant. It helps me get my thoughts together, posting here.... but it could help me so much more.
>Do you have _any_ idea what an IQ of 100 means? And yet, this is by agreement the majority of people. Let's assume that those on the Net are the right half of the Gaussian curve - there still are a lot of morons around here.
Yes, posts that even attempt to be intelligent are wedged in that tiny sliver of the curve, way off to the side. Your democracy dollars at work -- everyone is good enough, unconditionally, to participate.
>And those with higher mental capabilities tend to hide this fact even from their own consciousness with large quantities of psychoactive substances (alcohol, barbiturates, other sedatives, heroin, other downers, large doses of hemp, etc. etc. ).
I always did better in classes when I smoked moderately, because it made them more challenging. When I had my head together too much, I would rather do original thinking than grind through some artificial textbook problems.
>We simply have to live with the fact that 99% of ALL human communication is completely empty, meaningless, superfluous and just plain silly. It makes every intelligent signal even more of a thirstquencher...
This sounds like a defense of the twisted reasoning that "evil is good because it makes the good seem even better."
I'm thinking of moving permanently to the philosophy groups, such as alt.philosophy.debate and talk.philosophy.misc, not because I am exclusively interested in philosophy as opposed to other topics, but because there, I expect to find a much higher percentage of postings that at least attempt to contain information -- say, 2%, rather than 1/4%. From what I gather, the real thinkers use listservs or mailing lists. And the technical newsgroups are better. For example, Marvin Minsky is in the philosophy of AI or cognitive science group.
And I believe that philosophy, unlike other "topics", has the potential to join and transcend many other topics, including LSD phenomena. To make a fine distinction, it's not LSD itself that is interesting, but rather, the philosophical, religious, and psychological questions that it forcefully raises.
The caliber of discussion in alt.drugs.psychedelics is an embarrassment and a waste of time! People should be shamed into trying harder to say something substantial, something of interest. Contribute something valuable. Stop kicking the same old flames around and around, asking the same questions, adding your postings to the pile of noise. Too often, I go through the labor of clicking and waiting, to see basically nothing. Most postings don't contain thought or ideas. What do they contain? I don't know, but you could pile a thousand of them on top of one another and the stack would be no taller than a dime. Doesn't anybody have anything interesting to say? You should read lots of books and magazines on a great variety of topics. Material that has been carefully written, so that it is densely packed with knowledge and ideas. Too many people read nothing but each others' non-postings full of emptiness. These posts are "comments" or "responses" in the most impoverished sense.
I would have to do a study to say exactly what type of "information" these millions of postings do contain. Whatever it is, it adds up to nothing. But you have more potential than that. Don't waste your potential by being intellectual retards with no excuse.
One of the worst, deepest problems on the net is mental fragmentation. When in the psychedelics topic, the average non-thinker thinks of nothing but psychedelics. They fail to connect it with other topics. In the music groups, they isolate and impoverish the subject of music.
Most people simply have nothing to contribute and are incapable of bringing in voluminous knowledge from a variety of sources, because they don't read nearly enough books, and don't read many good magazine articles.
It doesn't help that the average net sub-human is
an adolescent 20-year-old boy with an American "education"
Thanks to your environment -- the net, American schooling, low-brow pop culture, and career-oriented college, your mind has not yet been born, but is still slumbering in the womb of mechanical conformity to the shallow entertainment approach to life, and an automatic sense of belongingness through sheer formless participation. But you can redeem yourself simply by raising your standards for your own postings and the collective standards. The net can be redeemed -- we have no one but ourselves to blame if we fail to even make the attempt.
LSD has the potential to raise the biggest questions forcefully. The right response is to read and to think -- to engage these questions, which involves looking beyond LSD trivia. This is what it means to truly use LSD.
I've become too much of an expert about using LSD. I've read all the books, I've read all the web sites, I've read all the newsgroups. No one has anything to offer me anymore. Since serious scholarly study of LSD is all but prohibited, all we have is the dated, limited 60s interpretations, flakey new-age approaches, and newbie stories and questions. I want to develop my advanced, rational interpretation of LSD phenomena more, through online reading and through newsgroup discussion. But there are no serious, well-read thinkers who are willing to publically write about LSD. The newbies in the newsgroups know little about LSD and little about philosophy and about theory of religion, or transpersonal psychology, and are unable to provide any intelligent feedback about rational interpretation of LSD phenomena and religious or transcendent insights, ego death, loss of control, and so on.
Movies enhanced while watching on LSD Brazil
Total Recall
Blade Runner
The original Batman movie
Any decent atmosphere movie
New York had an LSD movie tribute week a while ago.
Philip K. Dick should be read on LSD.
>Don't watch John Carpenter's "Village of the Damned" while tripping! I just did. Yeargh!
Nitrous is called "hippie crack" because it is so brief and intense.
Even the psychoactive publications need more coverage of the visionary state
>All pot people, please read the new orders from Jack Herer and Norml and The Medical and Legal experts in the pot area.
What new orders? Where? What's the URL? Sounds like a decent idea.
>We true pot people must now get out of this mess and consolidate three groups down to one, for the benefit of the herb. If we keep being associated with these other bad drugs, we will never get legal pot, so consolidate:
alt.drugs.pot
rec.drugs.cannabis
alt.hemp
>all down to
talk.drug.cannabis
>Everybody agrees that we MUST get pot away from the other drugs, and do it NOW. This is for the good of the herb.
>DrG, Esq. >Dr. Grinspoon >ACT >NORML >Carl Olsen >Krystal >Jack Herer
That's like High Times, since they never talk about anything but pot. It should be renamed Pot Times. Thanks to Psychedelic Illuminations magazine, High Times no longer has to feel lame for neglecting the powerful drugs. Speaking of powerful drugs, let's all demand hash oil information. Buds can only be concentrated to a limited potency. If you are going to worship cannabis, then include the extremely concentrated forms too. It's such a mild-mannered world out there on the newsstands.
After I wrote that, High Times came out with a special issue on psychedelics, which is still available.
For analytical thinkers, LSD is the king of drugs.
You don't want to screw around with measley batches of 2, 4, or 10 hits. The only serious approach is to commit to purchasing entire sheets at a time. A sheet is 100 squares, approximately 100 micrograms each. You should not pay more than $60 a sheet, certainly not more than $100. I once bought 3 sheets of the finest quality for $150, along with an $80 vial of liquid. If you feel desperate, you should buy nothing and get a better connection.
Really, you should buy the liquid, as long as you can take an hour and commit to the evening, in order to sample it. Liquid is higher up the food chain, closer to the source. If you like paper, you can always Drop onto it. In this way, liquid transcends blotter, because you choose the substrate.
Half the "doses" sold on Haight are blank. They are sold by the same people who sell genuine dipped blotter, so it is literally impossible to believe anything they claim about its legitimacy. Their word is worth nothing. They are all untrustworthy, especially the born-against Christian dealers who use Jesus as a guarantee of quality, and then sell you blank paper for $120.
The only serious way to go is to taste it and wait an hour and 15 minutes (or until you've positively detected it). Tell them right off, that you are in the market for $60/sheet and you want to taste it from the actual sheet and not actually do the deal until you have tested it. Don't be a stranger, make friends.
If a guy is not willing to deal at this price, or unwilling to break a sheet, or unwilling to spend the full 75 minutes to make the deal, forget it. You don't need him. Hold off for as long as it takes. The point is to get a large supply, for reasonable cost, with minimal risk of getting ripped off.
HALF THE BLOTTER ON HAIGHT IS UNDIPPED. Or more.
Don't waste this supply. Don't experiment with tolerance build-up. It is a waste of the sacrament. Don't take more than a 10-strip -- diminishing returns -- again, a waste of sacrament. This is the law of tolerance: thou can not dose more than twice a week. For example, if you dose Sunday morning, you cannot dose again efficiently until Wednesday night.
When it occurs to you to transgress moral constraint and take up the sacrificial knife, fall on your knees and pray to the God of Fate, or Jesus, or Mary, or "BOB". Grovel contritely. Later, you can always just deny this act of faith and re-assert your self-control power. The main point is, that prayer is strategically useful to use heroic doses without ending anyone's life or ending up losing your freedom.
The highest way to use pot is 3 hours into a trip. THC enables you to put a distinct peak on top of the hard-to-pinpoint LSD peak. The highest way to use pot is to smoke during an LSD peak. Prepare for ego death, chills and premonitions, prayer for protection, cozmic insights, and so on.
Aside from this use, pot is a waste of time. It is the same pleasure as a cow-like lobotomy. Nothing wrong with smoking pot, but you shouldn't do it unless you are peaking on acid. Otherwise, I'm against pot.
Mushrooms are a waste of time, because they are too short-lasting and weak and bulky.
Actually, the purpose of coke, crack, pot, and heroin, is to get you through the waiting periods in between LSD trips twice a week.
The rush upwards happens sooner and faster than you think, and you find yourself in a post-peak plateau sooner than you think.
How long should a sheet last? Well, if you take a moderately strong dose of 500 milligrams -- ha, I meant 500 micrograms -- twice a week, that's a 10-strip per week. So, a sheet should last you 10 weeks, or 2 1/2 months. That would be about 1 sheet for 2 months, or 6 sheets per year. If you use less than this, then you are a mere dabbler.
The common standards are way too low. The baby boomers took the correct amounts, in the summer of love, but then they wimped out. Xers, don't let it happen to you.
I disapprove of coke, crack, pot, and heroin, because they waste money that you should be spending on LSD. Especially, mushrooms and X are a waste of money that should be spent on the one true sacrament.
Do physical chores. Clean up the yard or house. Pray. Call a friend. Being cerebral, sitting and thinking intensely focused thoughts without distraction is the best way to freak; do more mundane, unremarkable activities.
Dose more doses -- remember, the maximum humanly possible is 10 doses every 3 1/2 days. To peak even harder, smoke THC and get really wacked out. That's how all the good revelations of ego death happen. If you freak out, practice bowing and praying in defeat, because that technique is a great stabilizer and backup safety device, so that you may trip even harder. This way you can think about transgressing the constraints of morality, and transcendently violating your own will, yet still have recourse to trembling prayer to Jesus Christ, who died for your sins and removed the terrible guilt that God has put upon your shoulders for your rebellion against Truth. If that doesn't work, try trembling prayer to "BOB" to save you from your own freedom run rampant, out of control.
You don't need to understand why this is, it just works. You have already been infected. The remote controllers have a firm grip on your strings, and the doomed future has already happened. They have been permittting you to think that you, as the homunculus who lives inside your mind, control your own thoughts as you move into truly open horizons. You think that, because they have scripted you to think that. They have also jiggled on your strings, to let you know who is really at the helm, little man.
Drop a 10-strip and smoke large bong hits of stinky buds 3 hours into the session, while considering the nature of self-control cybernetics along the fixed time-axis of the block universe.
The Trembling Cyberneticist =8-o
Some say the real reason people follow the Grateful Dead around is to buy drugs and do drugs. That's what it is all about with them. But that's an exagerration and an unbalanced picture. If you actually hang out at a lot of shows, and read the Dead books, you'll find that drugs are just one aspect and they are not emphasized all that much. Many people at the shows and even Deadheads use drugs in moderation, occasionally, or not at all. Pot, shrooms, and acid are available there more than at most rock concerts, but the above characterization is greatly exagerrated and portrays a single (common but hardly universal) aspect as the complete driving force. In practice, drug use is pretty incidental. The shows are structured to fit with an acid-trip cycle, or more realistically with the compressed timeframe of a mushroom trip, but only a small percentage of the audience is on psychedelics during any particular show. What you say has no more than a grain of truth. Almost all the attendees go to the show to go to the show as a whole experience, not usually for the sole reason of obtaining and using drugs.
Shakedown street is the street at which you can obtain miracle tickets to enlightenment, like at the raves.
>Where does one find such things as well as to avoid the corruption in the drug culture. The last three times I dosed was from blotter, and the result was low-grade. This also happened with esctasy as well the last two times. You all to briefly point out this corruption. What do you suggest to the many people who get ripped off in this dishonest culture?
>I am sick of eighths of green for fifty dollars and it ends measures out at at less than two grams. I am vile and embittered to getting something that is something else that is cheaper or of lower quality. You also, I imagine, have the luxury of access to these things. So where should I go and what should I do to avoid the crap that is involved in our dishonorable and dying favorite counter culture?
The thing I'm gravely concerned about is not bad acid, or weak acid, but blank paper that has not been dipped. It's such a bad problem that if they keep it up, buyers are going to say "fuck it, fuck your bullshit bogus blank blotter". People might just stop buying, because it is NEVER real any more. How far can these crooks go, before people tell them to jump off a cliff? That is why if you want serious quantities, you must work with someone and sample.
>About buying off the street. What should I do with the guy for the hour I'm waiting for effects? Hang out and talk to him? Sit and do nothing? what?
Hang out and talk about music, the Dead, drugs, drug effects, pot, south american rainforest exotic psychoactive plants, the legal system, guitar, bands, girls, previous deals, future deals, plans, travel, places, concerts, High Times articles, drug and punk and hippie resources online, radio stations, the significance of the Web, Java applications. However, buying off the street, it's less usual to hang out. Half the dealers on Haight, especially, won't want to hang out, because they know they are selling undipped paper.
I hung out once in another city for over an hour experiencing no effects. You have to be prepared for discovering that the paper is undipped -- thank him gratefully for letting you sample it, offer him $4 for the dose, maybe more for his time. Remember, he might become a valuable friend. He might honestly believe it's dipped -- maybe it's a blank sheet but others in the batch he sampled had actually been dipped.
Think "repeat business" -- that's where the real action is, for the quantities I have in mind. And the prospect of repeat business will encourage him to provide genuine, heavily dipped, thoroughly dipped paper.
The best is if he himself dipped it. Few dealers would lie and say that they personally dipped it, because they need the excuse, "Oh, a stranger sold to me, I didn't realize that sheet hadn't been dipped -- it's not my fault." Here is the one exception to my rule, "ignore what they say because they say the exact same things for strong, weak, and undipped paper": the one exception is, "if he says he personally dipped it himself, there is a 55% chance, rather than 50% chance, that the paper has been dipped." People will lie like a dog, but rarely will they go farther than they need to in lying about their own actions.
These low figures apply specifically to the spot on the Haight. Other cities are probably more trustworthy: perhaps 70% or more. Because they Haight is so associated with psychedelics, there are many more ripoffs there. You might have a few percent higher chance at the spot in Berkeley, but don't buy from blacks. Deadhead/hippie/grunge/punks are usually serious.
When you are planning on sampling, or in the middle of sampling, decline to smoke pot. You must be completely straight -- uncertainty sucks. Ripoff artists like to destroy people's judgement and ability to judge. In fact, if he offers you a toke, that decreases his credibility! Doing massive bong hits with known-good doses is just plain wacky. That's good, but you must be scientifically straight in order to initially ascertain the strength.
Want to have fun? Tell someone who is selling for $5 that it's overpriced, no thanks, you'll deal with someone else. They go ballistic -- "but this is real!!! but this is your only opportunity!!! but what if you don't find anyone else!!! but you're missing out!!!" What do you do?
Walk away, have a nice day. It's a free market, they have to face the facts of competition. At least you had the entertainment of watching his desperation.
Some will ask "what are you going to do with all that?!" Tell them that it is not very much. If you do 5 per week, that's 20 weeks or maybe 6 months. Or you could tell them that at 20 per week (10, twice a week), that would only last 5 weeks -- hardly more than a month, before you run out again.
Also, tell them that you have some, you are just "low". Don't admit that you are all out. Tell them you have some extra-strong white fluff, but you're down to a half-sheet. No, you don't have it on you. That will encourage them to offer competitive rates!
Tell them it's been several days now since you did a 10-strip, so it's a good time to sample. Be unhurried, but do not be willing to waste time, either -- keep in control of the situation, this way. Always have "another girlfriend". Never think that you depend on them, solely. Never get attached to one dealer. Never let him know you are all out, and jonesing for more. Act cool, be ready to split. You got the dough, if they are professional. You've got to be more professional than them. Sure, respect them, but damn it, keep your dignity. This is a voluntary exchange between free men in the open, competitive market.
If they want things their way, then you want to shop at another store. If they want $120, then you want to "meet up with a friend, once he gets another batch next week". You always have other options, forget that it is inconvenient. Don't think of it that way. Keep your expectations to the standard.
If they pressure you, saying -- "oh, it's been a half-hour, I gotta go, so, you got the $75?" Tell them, "If I can't hang with you for another half-hour or so, then I'll pass, and wait for my friend to get some more -- that's cool, here's $10 for the dose and for hanging out for a while."
100 micrograms is enough to hold me over until I get back to the car. I'm talking about serious use -- I don't have time to waste screwing around with 1 or 2. When I go to the trouble of going shopping, I want enough to last a while. My very question must be not how can I get some, but how can I get sheets. Basically, I am only interested in sheets, and the question is, how to shop effectively for that item. I am not interested in smaller amounts, and if I'm having to settle for that, it's time to pull out and re-strategize. I've tried the 10-at-a-time approach, and that yields about 40% actually-dipped, but at very high prices.
Say the standard price is $25 for 10.
Say 1/2 the product is not dipped.
That means, to get 10 actual doses, you have to pay $50, and perform 2 transactions.
To get 100 actual doses, you would have to pay $500, and perform 20 transactions. Can't you see how terribly unsatisfactory that is? You could never get the quantity needed, with reasonable effort and cost. On top of that, you'd be in possession of 200 squares of blotter around (half of them undipped).
I have a whole fucking collection of fake, undipped blotter, and I'd rather not even have it around. I've been ripped off by born-again Christians, by deadheads, by punks, by ugly people, by beautiful people, by harsh people, by gentle people. And I was blessed by those same people, on other days. There is simply no way you can guess whether this batch is dipped or not -- the person offering it is totally irrelevant, and everything they say is irrelevant. The same person will say the same reassuring lines one day as the next... but one time it's dipped; the next it's not. There is no way that you can guess. It's like a double-blind experiment. It's all a game of chance and bluffing. You have to figure that they don't even really know whether this batch is dipped or not.
No, one must stop, think, and go about it an entirely more serious way, asking the question, how to procure entire $60-$80 sheets with far fewer transactions and far less uncertainty. The answer is a friend and sampling, in a businesslike transaction.
A lot of guys don't even know whether their product has been dipped or not. They're not into it, or don't have the time to sample, or couldn't possibly sample, due to sheer quantity. Of course, if they purchase liquid and dip it themselves, then they can turn out serious quantity and they always know the scoop on the quality of their product.
But people who purchase sheets, and then sell them piecemeal, those are the ones tempted to deliberately sell undipped as real. They are lower on the distribution ladder.
In other words, a step in the right direction is to move up in the distribution chain, towards liquid. These guys selling small quantities, they are so far down the chain that they are just chisselers. Fuck 'em. I'm a business man, not some kid punk they can dangle a mystery dose or two in front of. Those guys, I just wave aside, by making the following clear. It is important to tell people up front:
I'm interested in buying an entire sheet. Half the blotter going around is bunk -- it hasn't been dipped. I've been ripped off way too many times, so I want to sample it. I don't want to split off a 10-strip for you - I need it for myself. I want to sample a random square from the actual sheet I'm buying. If it's not strong enough, I'll pay you $10 for your time and the single dose. I'll pay you $80 rather than $60 - that $20 is for being cool and spending a hour and 15 minutes (or possibly less) with me. If the sheet turns out to be real, once I get it home, then I'll be interested in meeting with you again. This is for my own use, by the way, I am not competing against you as a seller.
If they are not into this, FUCK 'EM. You don't need them. Find someone else, or get together some other time. If you buy blind, without sampling, you deserve to be ripped off, sucker.
Someone wrote:
>Your advice on buying from the Haight, along with meeting some guy selling doses for $5 have given me the push I need to go over to SF and buy off the street.
You are inherently at a disadvantage in that you do not live near the source. You really need to know a dealer or two more personally. Dealing with complete strangers is tedious, expensive, time-wasting, and undignified. So, I can't give you great advice to help you if you make the assumption of anonymous transactions. You should ask the question: how can I establish an ongoing relationship with a dealer? One answer: if you live in a rural area with no supply, move to a party spot.
>I am only interested in getting blotters right now, I do see the advantage of liquid, but I don't think I'd be a good judge of potency (of a liquid) and thus might not get a good deal. Whether or not this is a truly legitimate concern doesn't really matter, I'd just rather have a sheet.
With liquid and paper, you can make your own sheets. I gather that as you climb up the distribution ladder, or get closer to the manufacturing source, you will naturally run into more liquid. Sheets are more ergonomic to handle. Also the liquid might keep longer.
>Another thing is prints. I've talked to people, (friends, but not too reliable) that say they've gotten prints (specifically, flying pyramids) off of Haight. Do you believe this? Should I go for, or shy away from prints? (or just disregard the printing and treat it exactly like plain blotter?)
I don't believe anything they say about a certain print being better than another print, or one color of paper being better than another. Paper ain't shit. I have a bag full of undipped paper that was sold as doses. I am going to hand them out at a gig as a gag someday. You must learn to think of paper as paper. It's the dipping that counts. The only question is, "has this particular piece of paper been thoroughly dipped, in strong liquid?"
I do have a theory that as you get far from the manufacturing sources, you will never find undipped blotter; but near the famous manufacturing sources, the majority of material is undipped. You are much more likely to get ripped of through an anonymous deal on the Haight than anywhere else.
Never buy from non-whites. Always buy from whites. Yet, I've been ripped off by whites and blacks. Anyone who sells anything beyond pot is probably a genuine Head, but that is irrelevant. The question is, as always, "Is this piece of paper dipped, or not?" - not, "Is the seller sufficiently funky to earn my confidence?" There is just no way to know or guess, except tasting for an hour, or shining a black light on it to look for a blue-white glow. I don't care if it's fuckin' Jesus Christ himself, it still might be undipped. They're all a bunch of God damned rip-off artists, regardless of the details of their dress, speech, or attitude.
Watch out: It's a con. "Con man" means "confidence man". The entire ripoff revolves around the issue of your confidence. They manipulate standard rules of Trust, to manipulate you into putting ordinary yet completely unwarranted trust in a complete stranger who you will never see again. The Street is Confidence-Manipulation Street.
Here is the definition of "bullshit": "Oh, this is great stuff, IT'S FAMILY." An empty claim, because EVERYONE says that. It means: this is real because cross-my-heart, I promise it is. I back up this promise with this promise.
>If some guy walks by me, saying he has doses and shrooms, do I engage him, say I want a sheet for $60 and that I insist on tasting from the sheet.
You don't so much "insist", as say, I'm looking for a sheet for sixty and I want to taste it for an entire hour with you, because there is so much undipped blotter going around, you know. Half the shit out here is bunk, if not more." If he insists it's real but doesn't want to hang for an hour, offer him 80 -- that's 60 for the sheet plus 20 for his time. If not? Move along, there are other fishes. Or, you may choose to gamble. You have a 40% chance of success, maybe worse. When in doubt, on Rip Off Street, you have to assume that it is paper, unless a miracle occurs.
>I assume if he doesn't have a complete, perforated, sheet of proper proportions I should call it off? What is the general sequence of things?
He may offer you half or 2/3 sheet, at proportionately inflated prices.
The less you buy in a transaction, the more inflated the prices. And the more hassle you have to go through per dose to get a serious supply.
It is reasonable that they might have 80 contiguous doses that are from a real, dipped sheet, and it's reasonable to buy an incomplete sheet. A complete sheet is better, though.
Here are some ballpark figures. It's an informal market, so prices vary -- yet, they stay in certain ranges. The following is a start - it's hard to pin down this ranges, and someone else might do a better job of estimating these.
1 dose - $3-5 a dose
2 - $6-8
3 - $10-12
10 - $20-30 a 10-strip
50 - $40-60
100 - $50-120 a sheet
1000 - $300-500 a bible
>Do I take one off of the corner of a sheet and try it, then hang out with the guy for an hour? Or do I meet him later? If so, how do I know its the same sheet? Should I leave haight (go onto one of those side streets, or perhaps elsewhere?).
Often he will have to go to a nearby house to get it. But it's much better if he has it with him. The best dealings are the most straightforward ones.
Usually he wants to hang on to the sheet and will tear one off. You can ask for a specific, random one along the edge. But usually you both want to be discreet, so you can't really watch carefully. That's why the best way is to make him respect you as a potential future customer -- that's the only way you can make him want to give you the real stuff, if he has it.
The side streets several blocks away is ok. The park is ok and safer in some ways. But the park offers shelter for mutual ripoffs too.
Never ever ever hand your money to someone for them to go get the stuff. They will not return and you deserve to learn this lesson, sucker. To even consider this, would be to show them they can take you for all you've got, as easy as taking candy from a baby. Don't be a naive chump. Don't let them get real friendly and then take your money. If you do, you have shit for brains. This is wisdom.
>I think people might be more likely to try to fuck with me. In fact, I'm considering having my friend buy for me, he's a pretty good sized college guy.
But he must also be savvy about ripoffs and professional transactions.
>Cops. How risky is it buying? do you have any ways of spotting cops? are there undercover dealers? are some days worse than others?
Undercover cops always look just like hippies. In fact they are hippies: hippies who are cops. I fucking hate it when people say I look straight. I tell them: if I were a cop, I would dress in a hippie uniform, or in a cop uniform. Would an undercover cop dress like this? You are wrong, I do not look straight: I look nondescript rather than being decked out in full hippie regalia.
You should dress in grunge-hippie style, and do not be clean-cut and shaven. Let your scruffy, grungy-hip side out. Wear off-brands from non-chain stores. Buy a few costumes for this. If you have a backpack, it should be of natural material, not clean. Do not look sparkling clean or have a pristine backpack. Leather is good, and t-shirts with another shirt over it. Odd lengths, loose, with lots of dark green, black, brown... take a look around at the street style. Blend in.
>Cops are my main concern. I mean, I can stand to get weak blotter, but if I get arrested, oooooh.
They will ask you if you are a cop, or the man; tell them no. This is a legal procedure.
Have your $20's close at hand -- not way back in your wallet. Try to avoid reaching for your wallet. If you do, be low-key and natural. Have your bills in order.
Carry a baggie to store it in. It's very wasteful and bad style to stick in right into your wallet.
So, before you head out, organize your bills and a baggie in a front pocket.
Be absolutely skeptical, though you have the right to gamble. Don't expect to win, though, if you are dealing anonymously. If you walk away from such a gamble with a feeling of achievement, you are a sucker. Such deals are completely stacked against you. Establishing a repeat-business relationship is the only way to justify such confidence.
To do this, you should live near the marketplace or follow a band around and meet people there regularly, avoiding putting too much cash into one-shot deals.
Absolutely do not smoke pot when you are shopping. You must be straight in order to sample; tell them so if they offer, or want to smoke with you. Also remember that THC+LSD is very wacky and is only for serious researchers.
Only take 1 square, every time, because you must have a standard way of gauging strength. 100 micrograms is standard. There is a lot of talk that 75 mics are more typical today. I'm skeptical. But the most beautiful sheet I've crossed swords with was a crisply perforated plain white sheet with claimed strength of 120 mics per square. I wonder just how much you could load on a single blotter square. Probably a lot, with thick construction paper.
Unperf'd, construction paper works just fine too, as a medium, and is much less obvious because it's a random scrap.
But for all this talk about sheets, liquid is a more transcendent form.
(By "half dipped" blotter in a previous posting, I actually meant that out of 4 10-strips, you'll find that only 2 have been dipped.)Someone misunderstood a poor phrase. By "half dipped" I meant that out of 4 10-strips, you'll find that only 2 have been dipped.
Absolutely do not smoke pot when you are shopping. You must be straight in order to sample; tell them so if they offer, or want to smoke with you. Also remember that THC+LSD is very wacky and is only for serious researchers.
Only take 1 square, every time, because you must have a standard way of gauging strength. 100 micrograms is standard. There is a lot of talk that 75 mics are more typical today. I'm skeptical. But the most beautiful sheet I've crossed swords with was a crisply perforated plain white sheet with claimed strength of 120 mics per square. I wonder just how much you could load on a single blotter square. Probably a lot, with thick construction paper.
Unperf'd, construction paper works just fine too, as a medium, and is much less obvious because it's a random scrap.
But for all this talk about sheets, liquid is a more transcendent form.
Someone misunderstood a poor phrase. By "half dipped" I meant that out of 4 10-strips, you'll find that only 2 have been dipped.
Someone wrote:
>Your advice on buying from the Haight, along with meeting some guy selling doses for $5 have given me the push I need to go over to SF and buy off the street. I'm ready, but want to be absolutely clear on some things before I go. Especially with this bad weather, I don't want to waste a trip over there.
You are inherently at a disadvantage in that you do not live near the source. You really need to know a dealer or two more personally. Dealing with complete strangers is tedious, expensive, time-wasting, and undignified. So, I can't give you great advice to help you if you make the assumption of anonymous transactions. You should ask the question: how can I establish an ongoing relationship with a dealer? One answer: if you live in a rural area with no supply, move to a party spot.
>I am only interested in getting blotters right now, I do see the advantage of liquid, but I don't think I'd be a good judge of potency (of a liquid) and thus might not get a good deal. Whether or not this is a truly legitimate concern doesn't really matter, I'd just rather have a sheet.
With liquid and paper, you can make your own sheets. I gather that as you climb up the distribution ladder, or get closer to the manufacturing source, you will naturally run into more liquid. Sheets are more ergonomic to handle. Also the liquid might keep longer.
>Another thing is prints. I've talked to people, (friends, but not too reliable) that say they've gotten prints (specifically, flying pyramids) off of Haight. Do you believe this? Should I go for, or shy away from prints? (or just disregard the printing and treat it exactly like plain blotter?)
I don't believe anything they say about a certain print being better than another print, or one color of paper being better than another. Paper ain't shit. I have a bag full of undipped paper that was sold as doses. I am going to hand them out at a gig as a gag someday. You must learn to think of paper as paper. It's the dipping that counts. The only question is, "has this particular piece of paper been thoroughly dipped, in strong liquid?"
I do have a theory that as you get far from the manufacturing sources, you will never find undipped blotter; but near the famous manufacturing sources, the majority of material is undipped. You are much more likely to get ripped of through an anonymous deal on the Haight than anywhere else.
Never buy from non-whites. Always buy from whites. Yet, I've been ripped off by whites and blacks. Anyone who sells anything beyond pot is probably a genuine Head, but that is irrelevant. The question is, as always, "Is this piece of paper dipped, or not?" - not, "Is the seller sufficiently funky to earn my confidence?" There is just no way to know or guess, except tasting for an hour, or shining a black light on it to look for a blue-white glow. I don't care if it's fuckin' Jesus Christ himself, it still might be undipped. They're all a bunch of God damned rip-off artists, regardless of the details of their dress, speech, or attitude.
Watch out: It's a con. "Con man" means "confidence man". The entire ripoff revolves around the issue of your confidence. They manipulate standard rules of Trust, to manipulate you into putting ordinary yet completely unwarranted trust in a complete stranger who you will never see again. The Street is Confidence-Manipulation Street.
Here is the definition of "bullshit": "Oh, this is great stuff, IT'S FAMILY." An empty claim, because EVERYONE says that. It means: this is real because cross-my-heart, I promise it is. I back up this promise with this promise.
>If some guy walks by me, saying he has doses and shrooms, do I engage him, say I want a sheet for $60 and that I insist on tasting from the sheet.
You don't so much "insist", as say, I'm looking for a sheet for sixty and I want to taste it for an entire hour with you, because there is so much undipped blotter going around, you know. Half the shit out here is bunk, if not more." If he insists it's real but doesn't want to hang for an hour, offer him 80 -- that's 60 for the sheet plus 20 for his time. If not? Move along, there are other fishes. Or, you may choose to gamble. You have a 40% chance of success, maybe worse. When in doubt, on Rip Off Street, you have to assume that it is paper, unless a miracle occurs.
>I assume if he doesn't have a complete, perforated, sheet of proper proportions I should call it off? What is the general sequence of things?
He may offer you half or 2/3 sheet, at proportionately inflated prices.
The less you buy in a transaction, the more inflated the prices. And the more hassle you have to go through per dose to get a serious supply.
It is reasonable that they might have 80 contiguous doses that are from a real, dipped sheet, and it's reasonable to buy an incomplete sheet. A complete sheet is better, though.
Here are some ballpark figures. It's an informal market, so prices vary -- yet, they stay in certain ranges. The following is a start - it's hard to pin down this ranges, and someone else might do a better job of estimating these.
1 dose - $3-5 a dose
2 - $6-8
3 - $10-12
10 - $20-30 a 10-strip
50 - $40-60
100 - $50-120 a sheet
1000 - $300-500 a bible
>Do I take one off of the corner of a sheet and try it, then hang out with the guy for an hour? Or do I meet him later? If so, how do I know its the same sheet? Should I leave haight (go onto one of those side streets, or perhaps elsewhere?).
Often he will have to go to a nearby house to get it. But it's much better if he has it with him. The best dealings are the most straightforward ones.
Usually he wants to hang on to the sheet and will tear one off. You can ask for a specific, random one along the edge. But usually you both want to be discreet, so you can't really watch carefully. That's why the best way is to make him respect you as a potential future customer -- that's the only way you can make him want to give you the real stuff, if he has it.
The side streets several blocks away is ok. The park is ok and safer in some ways. But the park offers shelter for mutual ripoffs too.
Never ever ever hand your money to someone for them to go get the stuff. They will not return and you deserve to learn this lesson, sucker. To even consider this, would be to show them they can take you for all you've got, as easy as taking candy from a baby. Don't be a naive chump. Don't let them get real friendly and then take your money. If you do, you have shit for brains. This is wisdom.
>People might be more likely to try to fuck with me. In fact, I'm considering having my friend buy for me, he's a pretty good sized college guy.
But he must also be savvy about ripoffs and professional transactions.
>Cops. How risky is it buying? do you have any ways of spotting cops? are there undercover dealers? are some days worse than others?
Undercover cops always look just like hippies. In fact they are hippies: hippies who are cops. I fucking hate it when people say I look straight. I tell them: if I were a cop, I would dress in a hippie uniform, or in a cop uniform. Would an undercover cop dress like this? You are wrong, I do not look straight: I look nondescript rather than being decked out in full hippie regalia.
You should dress in grunge-hippie style, and do not be clean-cut and shaven. Let your scruffy, grungy-hip side out. Wear off-brands from non-chain stores. Buy a few costumes for this. If you have a backpack, it should be of natural material, not clean. Do not look sparkling clean or have a pristine backpack. Leather is good, and t-shirts with another shirt over it. Odd lengths, loose, with lots of dark green, black, brown... take a look around at the street style. Blend in.
>Cops are my main concern. I mean, I can stand get weak blotter, but if I get arrested, oooooh.
They will ask you if you are a cop, or the man; tell them no. This is a legal procedure.
Have your $20's close at hand -- not way back in your wallet. Try to avoid reaching for your wallet. If you do, be low-key and natural. Have your bills in order.
Carry a baggie to store it in. It's very wasteful and bad style to stick in right into your wallet.
So, before you head out, organize your bills and a baggie in a front pocket.
Be absolutely skeptical, though you have the right to gamble. Don't expect to win, though, if you are dealing anonymously. If you walk away from such a gamble with a feeling of achievement, you are a sucker. Such deals are completely stacked against you. Establishing a repeat-business relationship is the only way to justify such confidence.
To do this, you should live near the marketplace or follow a band around and meet people there regularly, avoiding putting too much cash into one-shot deals.
Don't pay more than $75 for a sheet if you aren't going to sample it and don't know the supplier. If you are going to sample it and/or know the dealer, then it would be justifiable to pay more. If someone asks for $90 or $100 and you are doing a quick deal, forget it -- do not gamble that much on what might be blank paper.
Boycott high-priced blotter, because so much of it is just blank.
I'm told that the Edmund Scientific handheld blacklight causes genuine dosed blotter to floresce. You can order one of these right now by visiting that company's web page. They cost $35.
Keep some blank white blotter to compare the test material to. Some colors of white seem to glow with the blue-purple black light color even without any LSD molecules.
LSD and other indoles such as psilocybin and DMT glow blue-purple.
Other drugs like DOB and its close relative 2CB also glow under ultraviolet light (UV), but they glow yellow.
9 to 5 M-F.
(609) 547-8880
Pocket Blacklight
Part number: T35,485 $36.95
Extra (additional) bulb T35,486 $17.75
Ask for a catalog too. They have a web site.
>Most of the non-good doses weren't weak or somehow "bad"; rather, they didn't do anything to me at all; they were pure bunk; blank. Several times (first 4 hits, then 10 hits) I took the LSD and didn't trip AT ALL. Those times sucked :(
"Bad" acid is practically a myth. The real problem should be addressed, not that fake non-problem. The real problem is blank doses. There are so many in San Francisco because that's where the whole scene is, and people there know they can get away with it. In places where acid is rarer, you never see blank blotter. The thought just doesn't occur to people. It wouldn't fly. So, there is kind of a filtering effect outside of drug-associated places.
Even at shakedown street at dead shows, lately half the blotter was blank. You can blame the government for a lot of this. All the real vendors are locked away.
You ought to feel very fortunate to get 70 real doses out of 120. 2/3 of the blotter paper on the street is blank, in the SF bay area.
It's awful the way people wring their hands over acid that is somehow "bad". All this "bad acid" is infinitely better than blank blotter! People can go broke from total ripoffs, while people with overactive imaginations tremble vaguely about "bad acid". People are failing to acknowledge a real, very severe problem: the great shortage of non-blank blotter, and instead are concentrating on alledged, very minor problems that fade into utter insignificance next to the flood of blank paper.
"Bad acid" means "a trip I didn't like".
>What about LSD in gel form? I found some in Texas. Wierd effects, also had a strange tart taste, almost sour.
>Had 2 of the 4-sided, gold and silver sprinkled
black pyramid gels. Very clean! It had a pronounced tart taste to it.
>I have had many a good trip with the pyramid gels. I think I have noticed
that the gold-speckled ones have more of a speedy effect, where as the
silver-speckled are a more mellow trip.
>Very sour taste indeed. I have heard that these are probably the closest you can get to CLEAN LSD. The reason being that the pyramid gel effect is very difficult to duplicate, and is only made by very few labs. (Could be true.....I really am not sure though.)
LSD keeps better in gel form than on blotter. Otherwise, it's completely irrelevant whether LSD is packaged as gel or blotter.
Other practical, mundane benefit of gels over blotter: In addition to better stability, gels are unusual enough so that you are practically guaranteed that they actually do contain LSD, rather than containing no psychoactives at all. So, if you see gels, snap them up as an investment, because they are most likely strong, and full of LSD (rather than bereft of any psychoactives).
But there is nothing inherently better about gel than blotter as a carrier medium.
The point of severely diminishing returns on LSD intensity and duration is 10 hits. There is a tangible difference between 5 hits and 10. But there is little tangible difference in peak intensity or duration from taking more than 10 -- say, 20, or 50, or 100.
Can you tell the difference between 10 hits and 100? Is 12 is stronger than 8? If not, then it would be a waste of precious doses to ever do more than 10.
Maybe even that is a pure waste. Maybe the point of severely diminishing returns is at 8 hits. This is all very subjective, even if it's not entirely subjective.
I'm assuming 100 micrograms per hit.
>I've dosed aprroximatley 300 hits of acid and eaten shrooms about 10 times. I really have leasrned alot in my lifetime. The first time I dropped a hit was in 1967, and I saw Dr. Timothy Leary one time. To all you little skaters out there -- the acid you get is shit. We did about 20-30 microdots at a time.
Anyone doing less than a sheet a year is a dabbler. If you really found it interesting, you would have done at least a sheet a year for these 28 years. That would be 2,800 100 mic hits, which is about 3000 or ten times as much. Why do people set the standard for "Experience" so low? Look, most people spend the vast majority of their time in the default mode of cognition.
It is possible to do a 10-strip twice a week pretty efficiently, because tolerance goes away just about as quickly as it arrives. You only have to wait 3 1/2 days to have a pretty much full trip again. A week is guaranteed to put you well outside the tolerance period. If you have a weekday night session and have to work the next day, you can do it because of the speedy effect the next day. You feel spacey and blank out a little, but you are awake the next day.
It's self-deception to think that a hundred trips is "alot" -- especially when it is spread so thin, over 28 years. A hundred is nothing. If it's as profound as everyone says, why do they do it so exceedingly rarely?
Sex is great -- everyone should do it a hundred times, over a 28 year period.
At that measley rate, no wonder no one has done anything interesting with it. Acidheads are their own restrictors, when they say, "it's great -- once or twice -- BUT THEN YOU SHOULD HURRY TO DECRY, DENOUNCE, AND DISPARAGE LSD, and wed yourself to the vague spiritual jargon of the day about "outgrowing it".
You'll never hear me talking about "outgrowing" LSD. You burnt-out old hippies and philistine Xers have more than a thing or two yet to learn from LSD. But you won't find that out, unless you try it. Besides, LSD is not only about teaching you a finite, small group of insights; it's about employing an entire mode of cognition in which you can do anything at all, and continuously create. If you like being straight, then in between weekly sessions, you have 6 whole days to be straight. Isn't that enough?
There's a lot of rejecting LSD going on here, by its supposed promoters. But offering it so weakly, you merely deceive people into thinking they have "used" it -- when they have barely begun understanding it. And then, at that point, you yank it away from them, saying ENOUGH! YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO BECOME ATTACHED TO IT!
You all need to radically step up your standards of what "a lot" is, by at least an order of magnitude, if not 2 or 3! You think the race is over, and you haven't even gotten your engine warmed up! You sound like physicists in 1885 saying that everything has been discovered already, and all possible scientific tools have been invented and fully utilized.
You propose that after looking through a microscope 20 times, you should discard the microscope, and stop looking through it, because it would stunt your eyesight. But after 20 times, you have only begun to familiarize yourself with the basic operation of the microscope.
You have not yet begun serious research.
>I ate about 180 hits of white blotter at once. I saw a big pirate in the sky that would not go away for like five hours. As I layed about in the corn field ole' capt morgan up in the sky winked at me as his face melted away, for five hours.
Some people have taken 10 sheets at once.
What is the potential of doing a 10-strip every weekend? What can this power be
applied to?
I've been on an extended pirate trip lately -- the nightmarish White Ship haunting the stormy seas, with lightning bolts connecting the mast to the split-open heavens, praying to some captain outside the system to save me from my own acts I'm about to commit in the near future, acts that are unpredictable and uncontrollable due to my amplified, exagerrated, unchained freedom: the leviathan.
You can trip every 3 1/2 days with practically no tolerance-effect. But a week might be good to make sure you're getting your money and time's worth.
For example, Sunday morning and Wednesday evening.
30 days / 3.5 days = approximately 8.571428571429 heavy trips per month.
In a year, that's
1 year / 3.5 days = 104.2857142857 trips max
8 times a month, or 100 times a year, max. Living 100 years, that would be 10,000 trips -- maximum lifetime Experience.
>I took two doses at 4pm. Can I take two more tommorow at the same time and still be able to trip? I have heard that you cannot trip two days in a row. but I have a alot of acid and alot of time this weekend!
Yes, you will be able to. But at a very great expense.
Thou shalt not waste the sacrament battling against the Tolerance Barrier! Do not burn up your supply! The most often you can dose is every 4 days -- preferably, every 7 days. You can burn up a sheet very quickly, and you will be sorry when you run out. Think about it - one day, "gee I'm so rich with inspiration-giving scrolls". A few days later, "oh no, I can't believe it... I'm back in the desert of straightness, no oasis in sight."
The first day - 2 -- strong effect.
The second day - 8 -- barely tangible effect.
The third day - 12 -- no effect.
You will get far, far more mileage out of a given supply, by waiting.
>I seriously doubt you can trip 8 times a month with no diminishing effects. I tripped 3 times 6 days apart and when i tried to trip a fourth i ended taking 25 hits and not getting off at all. I took 5 hits and waited an hour and then took 5 more hits each half hour. now my tolerance is probable throughthe roof, ill wait atleats a month before tripping again.
I don't think that it's important to consider timing from the trip before last.
I still hold that you can trip efficiently every 3 1/2 days, session after session without end.
But whatever your metabolism, waste not the sacrament.
If you graphed the intensity curve of dissociative cognition in a 500 ug session, it would peak sooner than halfway through.
>Some buddies and I are going to be doing crazy eights [800 micrograms of LSD]. When should we do them?
Options:
>Which of the above methods would be best? I know that tabs build up a temporary immunity (tolerance) if you do them two days in a row, so would it be best to do them all or what? I want eight to be my best trip yet.
Do 6 of one or a half-dozen of the other. The area-under-the-curve, the total cumulative effect, will be the same, it will just have a different intensity curve. Do you want a shorter, peakier session, or a longer, flatter session? It adds up the same either way.
Generally, I'd recommend splitting the administration. I think the best time to re-dose is when you are in the peak zone. Once you start coming down, it's hard to climb back up. I think the best time is at t3.5 or t4. Some people figure the peak is at 6 hours, but I think that is way off. The peak arrives sooner than you might think, around 4 hours if not earlier. It's surprisingly hard to pin down precisely, because there is no way to reliably gauge one's current intensity. As in hiking, you can never see how close to the peak you are.
As soon as you feel the least need to re-dose, that's the time, because you're in the peak window and want to sustain that level.
These graphs are powerful because they enable you to stay in the sweet spot of being substantially altered for a long duration, without a jarring peak followed by a rapid fall.
Graphs for re-dosing during a session, percent of peak intensity during each hour, mastering the peak window, psychedelic intensity and recovery curves, mapping and mastering the parameters of psychedelics
Both Millbrook and the Pranksters were far more intense than today's low standards. Leary's _High Priest_ shows how bold and reckless he was. He knew how risky and crazy the stuff is, he did not deny that. In that book he does not come across as a vague simpleton -- "This substance brings out the nice, loving, kind part of people." He was not one to confuse psychedelics with MDMA.
The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence indicates interesting cognitive feedback loops that pack a punch. The Theory portrays and indicates what the key psychological phenomena are. The world can be fully explained to the rational mind, it just takes a few more years to work out the system of explanation about mystic phenomena and insights.
It's important to understand the intensity curve in the altered state. This curve can be effectively mapped out, without conducting formal tests that require equipment. Psychedelic altered states are a tool. Understanding the specific parameters and dynamics of this tool enables doing more with it. It is important to understand the timing and intensity level of the altered state. For example, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT are largely the same in effect, but the width of the intensity curve is different. STP (also known as DOM) might be even longer lasting than LSD; if so, STP has a wider bell-curve of intensity graphed against time.
DMT is like LSD shrunken to a sliver. Nitrous is way too expensive and clumsy. Sure, all these altered states are profound and one should have a balanced diet. But practically, you must acknowledge that money and time are limited. DMT ramps up quickly, then drops down quickly in intensity -- it's like an impulse function (large height, near-zero width). The intensity curve of psilcybin rises slower than that of DMT -- but still you can feel the DMT-like sense of breathtaking acceleration and deceleration. Almost as soon as you realize you're really altered, it starts inexorably fading, as fast as a roller coaster. Serious scholars need day-long sessions in which to read and think. Psilocybin and DMT are far too transient of a state. It takes hours to read, to think. Psilocybin and DMT provide a mere "glimpse". A glimpse is not enough; researchers need to stare long and hard with the 3rd eye, to scientifically map out the features of that state and record them.
LSD climbs up rapidly during a 3-hour period, peaks during, say, a 1-hour period, and then plateaus and declines over a longer period, with a long afterglow period of indefinite length. You can take more at 4 hours, but with diminishing returns. If you take more at 24 hours, you will get very little effect and are almost completely wasting the supply.
In addition to duration of incline, peak, and decline, the quantities of intake and levels of intensity of the resulting state of mind are also crucial parameters to fully utilize the psychedelic state. Tolerance is also important to graph out. You can have an almost 100% effective experience only 3 1/2 days after the previous ingestion, so the most dedicated researcher can have two strong sessions per week. This sort of research about the intensity and dosage recovery time costs a lot of wasted doses, based on concentrated and deliberate research.
The maximum possible effect is through 800 ug, after not having had a session for 3 1/2 days (or preferably, say, 2 weeks, to make sure you're recharged). It's a waste to take more.
A detailed graph of amounts, intensities, and timing enables more intense sessions, more frequently, without wasting the supply. Efficient and intense use of this cognitive key enables discovering and explaining interesting cognitive, psychological, mystic, religious, and philosophical phenomena, such as the alteration and cancellation of the accustomed sense of agency: the sense of being a free, powerful controller of one's own thoughts and actions.
Studying how much and how often the Beatles, Millbrook, and the Pranksters used psychedelics shows how many insights they got through using psychedelics. _Rubber Soul_ on the surface level is pop rock songs about relationships. But it is packed with wordings that also, deliberately, resonate with the altered state phenomena: "What goes on, in your mind? You are tearing me apart." This album was written so early, in 1965, yet the title and lyrics show a great authentic familiarity with mystic phenomena and with the potential to apply poetic ambiguity to encode double-entendres that allude to the phenomena of the mystic altered state. The Beatles must have being doing a lot, not a little, LSD while preparing that album.
Also, it is well-known now that the standard dose was more like 400 ug than today's 100 ug. It would be helpful to verify this through pinning down the quantities and frequency used by the 60s pioneers. People these days take too little, too rarely, to gain the personal experiences that they need if they are to personally relate to the Theory of Ego Transcendence. They should see that they are barely dabbling, and that greater skill, frequence, and dosage trigger more interesting phenomena that were familiar to the majority of explorers such as Stephen Gaskin, especially the experience of ego death. Ego death is the most fascinating phenomenon in the world, but 100 mics will never enable this hidden dynamic potential to manifest. Kids these days have never fathomed such a thing, and any lyrical allusions to ego death and related phenomena are utterly lost on them, even if they listen from within their 100 ug state of consciousness. You cannot decode 500-ug allusions when you only listen through 100 ug of altered cognition.
No one has to have the experience of ego death to find The Theory of Ego Transcendence interesting, but they would certainly find the attempt to explain ego death much more relevant and therefore personally exciting, if they themselves have personally apprehended or encountered this experience.
To bring people up to the intensity in which these most astonishing phenomena come forth, we need to collect specific data about just how much more intensely the 60s explorers tripped their circuits, compared to today's very low standards which are stuck in a combination of exagerrated caution, insufficient skill, and lack of practical communal knowledge about applying the intensity, frequency, and amount in order to invoke and cope with the resulting subjective phenomena.
Many people have found that prayer stabilizes them during intense experiences. Knowing this strategy, you have great security and the ability to go farther, if you want. People should work up gradually: for example, 50 ug, 50, 75, 75, 100, 100, 150, 150, 200, 200... 1000.
The experience of being forced to pray and call out for assistance does not constitute a proof of the existence of God or any other personal divine entity, nor does it prove that God is the master controller of the world and that various Bible prophecies are certain. Faith remains a leap, even after trembling prayer to save your control from itself.
Not everyone apprehends this type of experience, but people should be aware that others have found prayer an expedient stabilizer. People should know about this braking system so they can cautiously push themselves harder than they have been. Only if people push themselves harder will they have their own experiences to personally and intensely relate to my system of philosophy. Otherwise, my philosophy remains just more sawdust and abstract hypothesis.
According to the DEA report, blotter dosage is typically 50 micrograms. Samples ranged from 20 to 100 micrograms.
>The strength of doses. You said five squares is a good amount. But I read from people on Usenet about tabs so weak they don't get visuals! Actually, I had one dose on new years eve that was unbelievably weak. In comparison to other batches I've had (specifically Leary's) this was less than 20% as strong I'd estimate. Leary's left me dizzy on my way to peaking they were so intense. Anyway, can you describe briefly the dose I should take 5 of?
If you buy a nicely printed, cleanly perforated sheet -- 100 squares -- thrice dipped in standard-strength formula by an honest Deadhead, each square will contain 100 micrograms. 5 of these 1/4" by 1/4" squares is 500 micrograms, which is almost a maximum dose.
Some people say 600 micrograms is the maximum effective dose, but actually 800 or 1000 might be maximum, for a standard brain. This assumes you are fully recharged from the previous session, as happens after at least 3 1/2 days or more of abstaining. Do not waste doses by taking more after you come down. Booster doses are not a waste, though. But once you come down, stay down until you are recharged.
LSD is the king of drugs. LSD totally rules.
You don't want to screw around with measley batches of 2, 4, or 10 hits. The only serious approach is to commit to purchasing entire sheets at a time. A sheet is 100 squares, approximately 100 micrograms each. You should not pay more than $60 a sheet, certainly not more than $100. I once bought 3 sheets of the finest quality for $150, along with an $80 vial of liquid. If you feel desperate, you should buy nothing and get a better connection.
You should buy the liquid, as long as you can take an hour and commit to the evening, in order to sample it. Liquid is higher up the food chain, closer to the source. If you like paper, you can always Drop onto it. In this way, liquid transcends blotter, because you choose the substrate.
>When testing liquid, what is an average doseage (1 drop, etc), I have only used blotter, and if I were to invest in a vial of liquid, I would like to know how to know I am not getting skimped/ripped off in any way.
I don't have precise measurements for that. And most people who know, are not about to broadcast their knowledge. My guess is 1 drop per tab; 1 drop = 100 ug. Subjectively, that seems about right. Drops come in different sizes though. That bothered me, but then I took that attitude that I always wanted a strong dose and the only thing I was worried about was depleting the supply too quickly. Waste not the sacrament! It depends on the concentration -- but I get the feeling there is a standard: 1 drop = 100 mics.
I also think the vials are standard. 2 1/2" tall or so, 1/2 across or so, soft clear plastic, dropper top, screw cap. How many ccs? $80. I think the claimed doses were 100 100 mics - same as a standard sheet, and I suppose it went about that far.
>I first tried LSD 3 weeks ago, i got a paper that was approx. 3mm x 7-8mm small and was told that was half a dose (of "Daffy duck"). It lasted from around 10:00 to 21:00 in the evening. Is there a standard or usual size for a blotter?
1/4" by 1/4" 100 micrograms
That is sometimes referred to as "a dose" as in "I'll take 3 doses". But a decently strong "dose" would be "5 doses", that is, 5 blotter squares of 100 mics each.
The chemists have deliberately used mild dosage levels to keep people from tripping too hard. In the 60s, full 600 mic dosage was very common, in one or two tablets -- or a glass of Kool-Aid.
Almost all doses out there now are perfectly good -- but they are about 75 mics, deliberately. The chemists want people to have more control over how much they take. You have more choice over tripping moderately or fully. If you want full intensity, simply take more.
Suppose it takes 600 mics to fully trip (it might be 1000, I haven't seen this discussed).
Suppose each tab has 75 mics.
600/75 = 8 tabs.
So, you can trip to maximum on today's blotter. Just take 8 tabs.
>A dose of LSD purchased a full 12 years earlier, possibly even older since it may have sat for a year or two before that, plastic gel "windowpane", poorly stored for those 12 fucking years in a drawer exposed to heat sometimes, still was quite effective. Possibly some minor decrease in potency but the original was estimated at maybe 200 ug per, i.e. probably 4 times the typical dosage available nowadays, so even with a decrease it was still adequate.
My experience completely agrees with this: there is no "problem of storing acid". Just don't leave in on the kitchen windowsill. Wrap it in foil tightly and put it away anywhere. It will turn brown but will still work practically 100%, years later.
>Does acid need to be frozen in order to be preserved? I have read that it needs to be kept out of light and oxygen, but don't know if the freezer thing is just myth or not.
It can be kept in tightly wrapped foil for years, until it turns brown, and then it still works great.
People greatly exagerrate its volatility.
>Suppose (just suppose) there never was any acid after all. Someone just made up that story 'bout old Doc Hoffman and the bicycle and all that. It's actually just been YOURSELVES doing it all along, the past fifty-odd years and counting.
No way. Proof: sometimes you eat a square, and nothing happens -- it's bunk (undipped). Yet other squares have an effect. All the time, you wish and expect both to work. But wishes don't count -- reality counts. Given that you had the same wish and expectation for it to work both times, how come only the one square has an effect, and not the other? Therefore, tripping is not simply a self-made effect.
The Leary crew gave, what was it, nicotine or something in pills to one group of people, and LSD in identical pills to another. It didn't take long for them to figure out who were the blessed ones.
"LSD" means Loosening of ergot, Acid, Two
ethyl groups. Using these common English words, LSD would be called
"LAT" - Loosening Acid Two.
LSD is the distilled essence of:
d-lysergic acid diethylamide hydrochloride tartrate 24.
For "LSD-25", you should mentally think the following:
Loosening ergot -- acid [Saeure] -- Two [Di] ethyl groups -- 25th compound.
Loosening-ergot Saeure [acid] Di [two] ethyl
d-LSD-25
English names
d-lysergic acid diethylamide = diethylamide of d-lysergic acid d-lysergic acid diethylamide 25 lysergic acid diethylamide (English) lysergic acid diethylamide 25
German names
Lyserg-Saeure-Diaethylamid (German) LysergSaeure Diaethylamid (German) LysergSaure Diaethylamid (German) [to do: put Umlauts above the 'a']
Start with a lysergic acid molecule, and substitute the OH in the COOH (acid) group with diethyl group, i.e. two ethyl groups. So acid is in fact not an acid -- it's an amide.
>Mushroom toxicity is a matter of dose, not the compound itself, anything, given in the proper dose, will be toxic. Adulterated blotter is a myth; everybody has heard of it, but nobody has had a first hand experience with it. What type of compound could they lace a piece of blotter paper with and have it present in a dose high enough to have any effects, remember, LSD is active at a dose of ~80mcgs, it would be very hard to fit enough of anything else on a tab for it to really effect you.
One mushroom promoter claims to have been badly poisoned from adulterated blotter. He's been completely demonizing LSD compared to mushrooms, thus showing himself to be unreliable, but still his numbers below might be correct. He's posted some interesting, but unbalanced, research.
>Here are a few of the hallucinogenic drugs that are potent enough to be active on blotter paper, currently found on the black market sold as "LSD".
>2,5-Dimethoxy-4-Bromoamphetamine: active at 400 micrograms. Produces an LSD-like trip that lasts from 18-30 hours depending on dosage. Its a very pleasant hallucinogenic amphetamine. This chemical is also sometimes called Bromo-DMA and has been proven by the Australian Government to be sold commonly as LSD on the black market. This chemical also apears commonly in the US thanks to the publication of PiHKAL by Alexander Shulgin. (My brother was slipped a huge dose of this drug in Oregon a few years ago and freaked out completely and had to be sent to the hospitol and remained there for weeks. He still hasn't quite recovered 100%. I'd like to have the person who did it arrested.)
>2,5-Dimethoxy-4-Chloroamphetamine: active at 1500 micrograms (requires the thicker blotter paper on the black market). Produces an LSD-like trip that lasts from 12-24 hours depending on dosage.
>2,5-Dimethoxy-4-Iodoamphetamine: active at 1000 micrograms (requires slightly larger than average sized blotter paper). Produces an LSD-like trip that lasts from 16-30 hours depending on dosage.
>2,5-Dimethoxy-4-Methlyamphetamine: the "R" isomer is active at 500 micrograms. Produces a mescaline-like trip lasting from 14-20 hours depending on dosage. This chemical shows up being sold as LSD and has been around since the early 60's!
>There is a thebaine derivative active at less than 100 micrograms found in Psychopharmacologia 30,108(1973). It produces an LSD-like trip and causes an itchy feeling to be felt and is reported as being very unpleasant at high doses and can last from 1 to 3 days depending on the dosage used! This has rarely been sold as LSD because of the itchy feeling it produces. (I've had personal experience with this horrible compound or a related chemical, its one of the reasons I quite using "LSD" and switched to mushrooms. The itching felt horrible. It didn't peek until 6 hours and lasted for about 5 days. All throughout the entire trip I felt sick and couldn't sleep. I never want to go through its horrible effects again! Perhaps at lower doses its pleasant. I wouldn't want to try it though.)
>Please be kind to our environment and switch to organic hallucinogens. The chemically manufactured drugs are not good for our environment. The chemicals used to make LSD and other drugs support chemical plants that contribute to the destruction of our beloved planet earth. Psilocin is nature's answer to artificial chemicalls such as LSD.
>Do mushrooms give you flashbacks?
>The commonly described type of flashback is a myth, or urban folklore; they don't happen for LSD any more than for any other life-shaking experience.
>Flashbacks are a myth, believe it or not, that's what they taught us in medical school too. Flashbacks that people do have are possibly a conditioned response to a traumatic experiences.
>Are there any other bad side effects of mushrooms?
>Mushrooms contain alkaloids and substances besides psilocybin. Like absinthe, it's questionable just which chemicals have which effects. Mushrooms may actually be a blend of psychoactives. Some of these alkaloids might be unhealthy.
>No -- mushrooms of the Psilocybe genus only contain TWO psychoactive constituents: psilocybin and psilocin. These ARE the chemicals which produce the psychoactive effects. They are both indole alkaloids, psilocin is structurally similar to bufotenine (found in the skin secretions of african toads). As a matter of fact, during the late 1950's, Sandoz pharmaceuticals owned the patent on both these compounds and marketed it as Indocybin for use in psycholytic therapy.
>LSD has been tagged as "artificial", whereas mushrooms are "organic". Actually, LSD is found in many plants. The difference often between the stuff on the street and the stuff in plants is this:
>Lysergic Acid Diethylamide - what you'll find in "tabs"
>Lysergic Acid Amide - what you'll find in seeds/leaves/bark, et cetera. Morning Glory seeds, Baby Hawaain Wood Rose, Sleepy Grass, ergot of barley, ergot of rye.
>LSD is not necessarily an unnatural substance. Can you honestly call something unnatural if it was grown in a lab when it does, in fact, grow in nature?
Ergot, a fungus that grows on rye or barley, looks like tiny mushrooms.
>Do you have a better chance of having a bummer on Acid than on shrooms? I have done both but i didnt take much of the shrooms. I took Acid and had a horrible time. So far Mescaline has been my favorite.
>Acid is a TOTALLY psychological drug. If you're in a happy mindset, and aren't worried while going up, you'll have a great time! If on the other hand you're worried that you'll have a bad trip, you will. See, it's all in your head. As Jim Morrison said, "When you kiss the tonge of the snake, show no fear or he will devour you." . Shrooms, well, you can't bad trip. They're just the most natural of all.
>A note to people who like to get reall fucked: Don't do the following at the same time: ACID, SHROOMS and POT. Shrooms and Pot is known as ZOOMING. It's like 5 hours of total mental confusion. ACID, when mixed with mental confusion creates a bad trip. That was my ONLY bad trip. Zooming on tabs. Don't do it. If you want to though, take shrooms when you're coming down off acid.
Special things happen when you combine THC and LSD (or THC and shrooms).
If you want special things to happen, smoke THC 3 hours into an LSD trip. Everything gets rubbery and freezes into a giant block of oneness, and the future hunts you down. What will you do next? Your future actions are lying ahead on the tracks of time, already waiting for you. Your friends, the radio, it's all coming together, all around you - remember?
The highest way to use pot is 3 hours into an LSD trip. I agree that for most purposes, shrooms are nice, pot is nice, and shrooms plus pot is very nice.
I didn't know what it was called when I drove up to go skiing on a weekday, on the empty slopes in April, driving up on the icy roads on LSD. I took the shrooms and smoked once I hit the slopes.
The wispy, puffy clouds were forming out of thin air and vanishing into nothingness in the pure blue sky at the summit. The clouds were green and pink. I looked carefully and squinted. Are they green and pink? I am definitely seeing, as clear as can be, clouds that are green on one side and pink on the other. They are not white. I wanted to ask someone if they were white clouds, or discolored. Too bad I didn't. I am sure they would have said "white." But that would merely be a concensus against me. I in fact saw green and pink clouds. What a beautiful, perfect, placid day, the one point of calm in my life.
Don't smoke all of your pot during ordinary days. Save some for the summit of the strange days.
>Anyone smoked heaps when having trips ???
>I only had one bad experience. Dropped 2 trips and smoked 1/2 oz. pot. I think the pot was the killer. I had never had pot with LSD before.
The highest way to use pot is during the peak of an LSD trip. Prepare to meet your maker.
>On THC and LSD, I sat on the floor and plunged into the non-stop cyberscapes displayed in front of me. I spent two hours mesmerized by the screens. Everything became cartoonish but also highly spiritual. I was broke the bounderies of conscienceness, yet everyone looked like either cartoons or sci-fi characters. Everyone and everything I looked at turned into an input of data in my brain.
THC combines with LSD to produce a characteristic toonish, rubbery surface-skin effect unlike LSD or THC alone.
>Prozac+animal tranquilizers+caffeine pills
>It's like you're outside your body. I thought I
could read other
>people's minds and control their bodies.
With caffeine pills, you should eat first, otherwise your stomach will ache and burn.
Combining uppers and downers is called the 'goofball effect'. Compare drinking espresso and smoking pot (caffeine + THC), especially if you do these 3 hours into an LSD trip.
Coffee can combine well with those LSD trips in which you feel "strangely drained" and feel the need to collapse and chill, when you literally are unable to hold yourself upright while sitting at your desk. During some of the speed-like trips, coffee might just make you sweat more, but it is unlikely to impair the session.
Caffeine, THC, and LSD are the most useful and exciting combination for general research. The caffeine can be taken anytime an energy boost is desired -- such as t0, t3, or t6. The THC is best taken just before the peak, at t3, though you can also take it at t0 or t6 -- to initiate the climb or descent.
Caffeine, THC, and LSD are all replenishable to a degree, during a session. You can phase them in various ways, including multiple administrations of LSD, such as 200 ug at t0 and 400 ug at t4 -- this would sustain the actual peak during a 2 or 3 hour window, rather than beginning the descent.
Various combinations of the three are possible besides the simple combination synchronized at the peak. To synchronize at the peak, here is a recipe/schedule:
o 400 ug LSD at t0
o 200mg caffeine at t3
o 4 hits of THC at t3.5
Whenever combining caffeine and THC, drink the caffeine first -- because it's much easier to smoke when you are stimulated than it is to make coffee when you are burned out and spaced out from THC. This is important. If you get wired and then toke, you will feel alert and vibrant -- a good feeling. But if you toke without caffeine, especially when you are on LSD, you will become too wiggy to make coffee effectively. The coffee must be prepared and drunk before the pot is administered, because coffee keeps your train of thought together. This is why you should adhere to the sequence and timing described above.
A consideration with such combinations is the preparation and administration overhead.
The advantage of LSD over other drugs, as far as administration, is that it is almost instantly ingested, particularly in the liquid form. If you take it in paper form, you can swallow it right away and concentrate on higher things, because the chemical is evidently absorbed just as fast in the stomach as the mouth, and keeping it in the mouth is distracting. Given this advantage of LSD -- that unlike nitrous or THC, you do not need to constantly attend to re-administering it -- you might not want to go through the distracting fuss of drinking coffee and smoking THC at the beginning, ascent, middle, descent, and end of the LSD session.
You can concentrate on the altered state of cognition, rather than the drugs, if you administer them once and be done with it. From this point of view, you should stick to the single-application schedule described above.
If you are willing to spend as much as a third of the session preparing and administering the drugs, then this recipe/schedule is well-synchronized or -phased:
65. Gather the smoking equipment and psychedelic supplies.
66. Prepare and drink the coffee. Pour and cover two additional cups.
67. Take 2 units of psychedelic -- t0.
68. Take several hits of THC.
69. At t3, heat and drink a cup of coffee.
70. Take several hits of THC.
71. At t4, take 4 units of psychedelic. At this time you will enter and sustain a level peak window for several hours.
72. At t6, take several hits of THC.
73. At t9, heat and drink a cup of coffee.
74. Take several hits of THC.
...and so on, until sleep at t16. The goal is to reach and sustain an intense psychedelic plateau through redosing just before the peak, and periodically re-applying THC and caffeine so as to maintain continuously high effects from them. You can see how complicated and distracting it can be to track and sustain these effects. But in actuality, once you learn the dynamics, you can take advantage of combining drugs, with less overhead, and you can choose just how much attention to focus. It depends on how much supplies you have and how often you prefer to toke and drink coffee, and re-dose.
Alcohol and nicotine can be handled the same way. Keep in mind the stimulant and depressant effects of each drug, and the duration of each application. The goal is to balance the stimulant and depressant effects, leaning slightly toward the simulant effects, while keeping intensity high and constant.
Also, on the subject of timing and distraction, be sure to eat a lot before t0, and plan to eat again a couple times. Have low-preparation food ready such as nuts, cookies, fruit, cereal, and milk.
In the 60s, some people kept a Thorazine injection handy. That drug re-integrates or dampens dis-integrated, schizoid, hyper-creative cognition.
Reminder: many people report that prayer to a compassionate controller-entity has a stabilizing effect.
>I've been Playing around with nutmeg, and the other day I read that the active ingreedant was soulable in alchol and ether. So I was thinking I could a high proof liquor and soak a little nutmeg in it and see what goes from there.
Nutmeg is a waste of time.
LSD is the best psychedelic for thinkers. All other psychedelics are for babies and new age people, and for people who are fascinated by botany and the lore of the jungle, while ever running farther from a real, intense encounter with their mind.
Terrance McKenna, while guilty of being apprehensive of LSD, at least promotes a fairly close simulation of the real, complete psychedelic experience: he accuses newage of avoiding the higher, "massive" doses of shrooms that are necessary to really gain Experience.
All people who use anything other than LSD must be shot. Especially you beer drinkers and caffeine addicts out there.
Your proposal sounds reasonable to me. But I don't care for chemistry. It's probably in one of these here books on my shelves.
Instead of messing with nutmeg, you should spend those hours earning money, save up, and buy a real psychedelic.
The other so-called "drugs" are a deception of Satan, which do more to serve delusion than enlightenment, by fooling you into thinking you are Experienced, when you are not Experienced.
Did the angels fly down from heaven to hand the prophets nutmeg? NUTMEG? No. They flew down from heaven to hand the prophets a little scroll to eat. It's right there in the Word of God, Revelation 10:9 and and Ezekiel 20:8.
Be a good slave of Jesus Christ, and put thou aside thy devil's nut.
The sleep-inducing effects of melatonin could cancel the stimulant effect of LSD. Melatonin might increase visuals. Could melatonin make LSD indistinguishable from mushrooms, aside from duration?
>I ate half an eighth of mushrooms, and tripped real hard. I have one other experience with a lower dose of shrooms, and lots of LSD experience. The experience is almost exactly the same. The one big thing, was that for the great amount of visual and other sensory hallucinations with shrooms I had was greater in ratio to the intensity. My trip was very intense, and very very very visual, but to get these visuals with LSD (as I have), the dosage and trip would be more intense, hence better chance of bad trip (subjective).
Those must have been strong mushrooms. In general, I doubt that the ratio of visual effects to overall intensity is greater from mushrooms than from LSD. Maybe it depends on the mushrooms, which vary a lot, even in a batch. It would be easier to compare psilocybin capsules, rather than mushrooms, against LSD.
People seem to agree that LSD has stronger audio effects than do mushrooms.
Every effect given by mushrooms is also given by LSD, but there may be a moderate, but definite, shift of emphasis, a different balance of phenomenological ingredients.
The most we can say is "Mushrooms tend to be a little more this way, while LSD tends to be a little more that way." Speediness, for example, is subjective. LSD might be somewhat speedy compared to mushrooms, but in general, mushrooms and LSD have very similar effects and are almost indistiguishable.
>On this mushroom trip I noticed the visuals above all. At the peak, everything was wiggling/melting/warping including my body, and reality was just fluxing around me. I lost some of my mental programming in an atmosphere of asking "What is reality? Who am/was I?" Not to be confused with ego loss, just a step towards it. I really enjoy both mushrooms and LSD, but I find I trust LSD more in regards to buying off the black market and possible poisioning. A few days after an LSD session, I am still mentally dulled. My higher reasoning of my brain seems less active. When doing thinkwork or whatever, my mind isn't as capable, but this tends to be an effect of drug use sometimes, and gets better over a period of days. I also smoked a lot of pot as I came down, next day, etc., which could be a factor. Lack of sleep is another thing, so nobody tell me I have permanent damage, don't jump to conclusions. Can anyone give me ideas on quickening my mental recovery, etc? Usually it takes me a couple of days, mainly, after my second or third dream state after tripping.
I recommend the Natural Sleep melatonin blend from the cognitive enhancement and life-extension industry. (800) 544-4440. A little expensive, about $24 total for 60 capsules, but researchers could really benefit from this dream-fortifying melatonin blend. Substantial rest = more energy. This mixture has both immediate and long-term release, as well as complementary ingredients.
Page 47 of Extropy #16 Q1 '96 (current issue) has an ad for this mixture. Like others, the first time I took it, I only had an amphetamine effect, the opposite of the needed effect. So the next time, I took it at 7 pm, expecting it to keep me awake for awhile. But by 8 o'clock, I was feeling heavy -- like I feel sometimes at 1 pm on Saturday after being active all morning. I went to sleep and dreamt about being heavily sleepy and needing to go to sleep. I had other rich, strange dreams that night.
This blend also contains:
Pyridoxal 5-phosphate - converts the dietary amino acid tryptophan into serotonin, which induces sleep and is partly converted into melatonin. This is a non-stimulating form of B-6.
Another chemical lowers serum glucose.
B-12 normalizes the circadian rhythms.
Inositol - induces relaxation.
3 other chemicals.
I don't know what they're saying about melatonin. The ad in Extropy sounds right -- that older people have weak sleep cycles. After the hell of being wide awake during the night and comatose during the day, I realized that the flip side of being mentally alert is getting deep, restful sleep. I hate depending on drugs, but I've been drawn toward trying various sleep formulations. I like one over-the-counter chemical better than another one that actually keeps me awake.
Melatonin is related to DMT and the pineal gland.
This sort of blend should be perfect to induce sleep during the strung-out blah state after 16 hours of intense cognition.
Any other opinions from those who have carefully, skeptically compared mushroom and LSD phenomena? We need to collect much more data.
http://hyperreal.com/drugs/faqs/FAQ-Psychedelic-Experience
LSD and psilocybin are similar but not the same.
For philosophers, LSD is by far the ideal psychedelic. Psilocybin is not long-lasting enough; same with DMT. LSD is very powerful and very long-lasting, and thus provides a sufficiently long-lasting and reliable cognitive state. Also, it is very easy to injest, so that you can concentrate on thinking rather than a process of ingestion. Coffee and THD are good helpers too, but LSD is the thinker's drug of choice.
Only the strongest mushrooms are of any interest, compared to LSD. When Leary tried LSD, he immediately lost interest in psilocybin, even pure psilocybin in pill form -- LSD was the real destination. Psilocybin is a pale shadow of LSD.
The source of a chemical is completely irrelevant to its use as a thinking tool.
Mushrooms provide a complex combination of alkaloids, some of them not very good for you.
A mushroom trip is short, which most people like. You start taking off immediately, and right when you think you took too much (because you project your acceleration out to several more hours of increasing effects), suddenly you start coming down fast. From what I've read and experienced, I accept the possibility that there are some slight differences in emphasis, but basically, mushrooms = short-lasting LSD; LSD with half the duration. (6 hours instead of 12, or perhaps more accurately, 4 significant hours vs. 8, or 30 peak minutes instead of 60). But a mushroom FAQ makes a proposition I'd like to look into: LSD is more aural, mushrooms are more visual. This might be false, but it does fit with the various rumors and could explain why there is "acid rock", not "shroom rock". Rock lyrics and music have been influenced much more by LSD than by mushrooms.
However, LSD is highly visual during the peak window, when there is 3-d visual waving and color blurring, as well as several other visual phenomena. I have done shrooms a number of times, but not often enough to firmly identify differences other than duration. The reason people often have many more LSD experiences than mushroom experience is that in today's economy, mushrooms are far more expensive than LSD. A sheet of LSD will give you much more experience than a few eighths of mushrooms.
Any difference between mushrooms and LSD is so subtle that the only significant difference is duration. But I am willing to consider evidence to the contrary, if only the researchers would be as clear and specific as possible. As far as the assertion that mushrooms vibrate with nature and LSD resonates with clinical atmosphere, I think that this is just a mental bias, one that never occurred to me. I am so glad that I read the books and reports and cultural mythos of mushrooms and LSD after having built up an independent interpretation. That was the good aspect of exploring during the 80s -- there was no psychedelic culture at all to bias a phenomenological researcher with arbitrary folklore.
>Here are some quotes from various books on hallucinogens that give an overview of the differences between LSD and Psilocybin (the main active chemical of most Magic Mushrooms).
>"LSD and mescaline are generally thought to have more impact than psilocybin because of their longer duration; they are also percieved by many people as more coercive than psilocybin. The psilocybin experiance seems to be warmer, not as forceful and less isolating. It tends to build connections between people, who are generally much more in communication than when they use LSD."-- Peter Stafford from PSYCHEDELICS ENCYCLOPEDIA, page 273.
>"LSD and mescaline have a reputation for being spectacular hallucinatory drugs. In moderate to high doses, psilocybin and psilocybian mushrooms produce striking visual effects in most users who close their eyes even among people who are ordinarily not much as 'visualizers'. In contrast to most other psychedelics, psilocybian mushrooms have also impressed many users with auditory effects."-- Peter Stafford from PSYCHEDELICS ENCYCLOPEDIA, page 275
>"Mushrooms produce an experiance similar to LSD but with a different signature. The mushroom high tends to be dreamy and drifty in comparison to the penetraing brilliance and lucidity of acid. Users often report feeling more relaxed on shrooms, sometimes even drowsy, rather than the speedy, edgy feeling common with acid."-- from THE ESSENTIAL PSYCHEDELIC GUIDE, page 28.
>"With mushrooms I've often felt that I'm in the presence of an ancient teacher, whereas with LSD, it can feel like I'm simply traveling my own mental pathways."-- from THE ESSENTIAL PSYCHEDELIC GUIDE, page 28.
>"One point which Jeff brought up, which later turned out to be very valid, was that LSD gave visual patterns and images, but psilocybin allowed you to sit down and talk with your hallucinations."-- Richard & Karen Haard from POISONOUS & HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS (2nd edition), page 112.
>"I found it [LSD] abrasively psychoanalytical, and I also found it very hard to hallucinate." -- Terence McKenna from THE ARCHAIC REVIVAL, page 8.
>"LSD is only reluctantly a visionary hallucinogen. In terms of activity in the visual cortex, psilocybin is a fantastically prolific generator of visual hallucinations. Visual hallucinations are, I think, much more accessible to most people on psilocybin."-- Terence McKenna from THE ARCHAIC REVIVAL, page 52.
>"Contact with extraterrestrials and voices in the head and Logos-like phenomena are not part of the general mythology of LSD. Certain exceedingly intense individuals may have achieved this intermittently, but it is not something that is attached to the notion of what LSD does to you. With psilocybin, on the other hand, it definitely is. Our survey showed that as people's doses increased, their sesceptibility to this phenomenon increased merkedly."-- Terence McKenna from THE ARCHAIC REVIVAL, page 74.
>"LSD seemed somehow to be largely related to the structure of the personality. Often it seemed to me the visions were merely geometric patterns unless synergized by another compound."..."In my opinion the unique quality of psilocybin is that it reveals not colored lights and moving grids, but places-junlges,cities, machines, books, architectonic forms of incredible complexity."-- Terence McKenna from THE ARCHAIC REVIVAL, page 98.
>"LSD is a psychedelic, but rather large doses are necessary to elicit the hallucinogenic paradis artificial, of vivid and utterly transmundane hallucinations, that is produced by DMT and psilocybin at quite traditional doses."-- Terence McKenna from FOOD OF THE GODS, page 32.
>This should help clarify any questions anyone has on the differences between mushrooms and LSD. Having had LSD and Mushrooms thousand of times I can personally vouch for the above statements. They are all very accurate descriptions of the actual differences between mushrooms and LSD.
>Some additional data on the comparison of LSD to Mushrooms:
>LSD takes about 1 hour for its effects to be felt (at which time most of it has left the brain) and peeks after about 3 hours and usually lasts untill about 12 hours. Mushrooms take about 15 to 30 minutes to take effect and peek after about 90 minutes to 2 hours (when the amount is at its highest in the brain) and usually last about 6 hours or less (although rare, extremely large doses can last up to 12 hours or more). LSD is an artificial chemical that must be synthisized in a laboratory. Many of the chemicals, chemical byproducts, and chemical plants that create the chemicals used to produce LSD are not good for the environment. Mushrooms are organic and benificial to the environment.
>LSD is very potent and active at 50-100 micrograms and Psilocin is active at 5,000-10,000 micrograms. LSD effects both the serotonin and dopamine neurostransmitter sights in the brain, Psilocin only effects the serotonin neurostransmitter sights in the brain. Other drugs that effect the dopamine neurostransmitter sights include caffeine, cocaine and other stimulants. The fact that Psilocin only effects the serotonin neurostransmitter sight may explain why its effects are so different from LSD.
>Psilocin (4-OH-Dimethyltryptamine) is very closely related to a chemical present in the human brain called DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) that is partly responsible for producing dreams. LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is a very large chemical and is unlike anything found in the human brain.
>Psilocin ingestion in the form of Mushrooms has been done for thousands of years by certain native americans and other people throughout the world, generation after generation. LSD is a relatively new compound that has only been around for 53 years.
>The cheap costs to obtain LSD and widespread avialability of LSD are the main reasons why its use is more prevelent today than mushroom use is. Mushrooms tend to be used by the elite do to their high price. A good mushroom dose can cost 5-10 times as much as a comparable dose of LSD. Its also far more exspensive to produce psilocin chemically than LSD, thats why mushrooms containing psilocin apear on the black market. Its actually cheaper to grow mushrooms containing psilocin than it is to make psilocin chemically.
>Please be kind to our environment and switch to organic hallucinogens. The chemically manufactured drugs are not good for our environment. The chemicals used to make LSD and other drugs support chemical plants that contribute to the destruction of our beloved planet earth. Psilocin is nature's answer to artificial chemicalls such as LSD.
You have quoted 4 or 5 authorities. I don't trust the authorities' interpretations and assessments too much. McKenna and Leary, for example, make a great variety of statements, some of which I agree with and some which I reject.
If these substances weren't illegal, it would be easy to verify all these assertions with much greater reliability.
Mushrooms are very expensive, when trying to obtain strong, lasting efffects repeatedly. But at least your posting provides specific things to look for.
For sheer quantity of experience, LSD is unbeatable, due to the current conditions. Mushrooms are too short-lasting, too variable in strength, too expensive, and unpleasant for consuming in large quantities. If mushrooms were carefully cultivated for maximum strength, and available in great quantity at low cost, I might agree with you. Given current conditions, LSD has many advantages, for long, intense research sessions.
>Here are a few of the hallucinogenic drugs that are potent enough to be active on blotter paper! And these days are found on the black market sold as "LSD".
Mushrooms can be dosed with other drugs as well as blotter can be.
You are being an alarmist and extremist because of one event. You should be a relentlessly critical, balanced, and unbiased thinker. There are a lot of great doses out there. We owe a lot of respect to the great chemists.
Given the current conditions, there are certain advantages and disadvantages to both LSD and mushrooms. Mushrooms are great and awesome in their way; so is LSD. I'm sorry that you were burned so badly, but it is nonsense to portray all LSD as synthetic, toxic, contaminated junk. You are speaking from an emotional, psychological place. You are trying to get back at a specific supplier by slamming and blacklisting LSD entirely, for emotional reasons. Genuine LSD does what it does, perfectly well.
You are against bad lab and distribution practices, so you should slam them. It is absurd to demonize the LSD molecule because of your misfortune. Your psychedelics research is highly valuable, but your have taken your experience of contamination and let it contaminate your otherwise valuable research.
>Acid makes you have to reconstruct your life and nothing you learn on it is really true. It also molds you into your personality. Mushrooms on the other hand teach you things and help you expand your mind and personality. Acid is fake. All it really is is the angry part of someones conciousness. Stick with shrooms
Many people reject that assessment. It is controversial.
A major reason so many people have pleasant experiences with mushrooms is that mushrooms are so short-lasting and moderate in intensity. Also, they are so expensive that people are less likely to venture very far out, frequently.
You have to take into account the current climate of high prices due to prohibitionism. Then you find that mushrooms have their limitations.
Many people have had extremely profound and valuable experiences with LSD.
Mushrooms are not ideal in every way. Both LSD and
mushrooms have their pros and cons. LSD has certain advantages over mushrooms.
In some ways, mushrooms are inferior to LSD.
The price of mushrooms should be reduced, and the most potent types cultivated.
Only then could mushrooms replace LSD as a serious philosophy tool.
>Mushrooms give different effects from LSD. For example, Psilocybe Cyanescnes makes you feel sleepy, LSD makes you feel stimulated. Psilocybe Cubensis reduces blood pressure and body temperature and LSD increases them both. Mushrooms in general have a very dreamy quality to them and LSD is very "intellectual".
>Psilocybe Cyanescens has "Melatonin" like effects that are very strong and totally unlike LSD.
One recipe that is brewing is taking melatonin with LSD. The result might be indistinguishable from mushrooms. The melatonin's sleep-inducing effect cancels the LSD's stimulant effect and increases the visual effects.
>LSD and mushrooms have only 2 simularities. 1) they produce hallucinatory visuals/sounds/etc. 2) they are both mind expanding. That's all they share. All the other psychological, physical and psychedelic effects are very different.
There are a fair number of people who have tried both many times didn't notice a difference. The differences between LSD and mushrooms are subtle almost to the point of being insignificant, aside from duration.
>Please be kind to our environment and switch to organic hallucinogens. The chemically manufactured drugs are not good for our environment. The chemicals used to make LSD and other drugs support chemical plants that contribute to the destruction of our beloved planet earth. Psilocin is nature's answer to artificial chemicalls such as LSD.
I am all in favor of psilocybin and mushrooms themselves, but given the conditions of procurement, the expense, the unreliable quality, LSD has advantages. In a perfect world I might agree that mushrooms are good enough for full-fledged alteredness. But for various practical reasons, I am not really interested in any drug other than LSD.
The chemicals used to produce LSD don't add up to much compared to other industrial chemicals. I am pro-environment, but also pro-intensity. Full intensity could be achieved through psilocybin capsules, but given the current climate, such capsules are not available. They could be manufactured, perhaps with less impact on the environment than LSD production, but perhaps not. Probably the best solution, to fulfill environmental considerations and provide full intensity, would be to greatly reduce the price of mushrooms, cultivate the most powerful strains, and make them available in much larger quantities.
Assuming that the Eleusian mysteries used an LSD extract in Kykeon (sp) as described by Hofmann in his soon-to-be-reprinted _Road to Eleusis_, there may be environmentally harmless ways to produce LSD.
Mushroom culture is more mellow and laid back. Like THC, psilocybin is a social drug well-suited for the majority of people. LSD clearly exceeds the atmosphere of socializing, because of its intensity. It is more radical, more pure, in its way. LSD is more absolute than mushrooms.
Of course this all depends on dosage. If you take enough psilocybin pills, you can probably reach much the same state as taking a thousand micrograms of LSD. When people take smaller doses of psychedelics, they tend to enjoy their experience more, but they have less remarkable experiences. With a small enough dose, you can effectively ignore the cognitive disturbance.
Whether mushrooms or LSD, there are two approaches: the moderate, and the intense. Insofar as one favors high-intensity, they will probably prefer postings about LSD. There are strong pragmatic reasons to associate LSD with high-intensity and mushrooms with low-intensity psychedelic effects, even though you could theoretically approximate an intense LSD state with mushrooms: you would have to consume a very large amount of mushrooms. This would be much more expensive than an equal amount of LSD, and much less reliable. You could easily take much more than you wanted, if you were shooting for becoming 60% altered instead of 100%, because individual mushrooms vary greatly in strength.
Psilocybin pills are much more usable than mushrooms, because you can measure the amount and control it accurately. But in the current conditions, a serious supply of either mushrooms or psilocybin pills would be much more expensive than an equivalent supply of LSD.
For monetary reasons alone, the serious psychedelicist can utilize LSD much more than psilocybin.
With conditions as they are, THC is the weakest drug, and people consume small quantities of it. LSD is the strongest drug, and people tend to consume maximum quantities of it. Mushrooms are in between, and people tend to consume moderately large amounts. Mushrooms are "the intermediate drug". Pot is the most moderate drug. LSD is the drug to take if you are interested in the greatest intensity.
>LSD isn't most powerful drug and by the way how do you compare these if you take normal dose of acid (100 mics) or huge dose of shrooms (like 20g) I bet shrooms would be much more powerful. If you compare potency by weight, LSD is somewhat 200 times stronger. 100 mics of acid = 20 mg of psilocybin = about 2-4g of dry mushrooms. And one more thing - LSD and shrooms are that much of different that they are impossible to compare exactly.
>defining the word "strongest" might take some doing - after all, it's all in the mind isn't it?
>but LSD does have a certain 'je ne sais quoi'...
There are grossly inadequate concepts regarding "strength". Obviously, since how "strong" a drug is depends on how much you take, you have to use proper terms and qualifiers to compare strengths of two drugs. Sure, this is complicated by the subjectivity of assessing how altered you are, but people can do a lot more to pin down these metrics (systems of measurement).
There is cross-tolerance between mushrooms and acid, indicating some essential similiarity.
Acid lasts around twice as long as shrooms. This means that shrooms have a steeper incline (to get to a certain elevation), but an almost immediate decline, and very short peak window, though not infinitessimal as with DMT.
LSD is more "potent" than mushrooms because a very miniscule weight of LSD, or a relatively small number of molecules, has the same effect as a much greater number of molecules of psilocybin.
To reach a given elevation, you either take a heavy capsule of psilocybin, or a barely visible amount of LSD powder. Still, the psilocybin would hit that elevation faster, and start dropping faster, than the LSD.
Think in terms of "a given elevation" and "time required to peak", and then the requisite or equivalent amount of a particular psychedelic substance. DMT is useful to define these metrics, because it is a third point on the graphs, with even shorter lasting than mushrooms. To resolve these conversations, the researchers should line up these metrics onto comparative graphs, so that we could see the difference. This would speak volumes. For the average person, mushrooms will provide the most enjoyment. DMT is so quick, don't blink or you'll miss it, and LSD is uncomfortably long-lasting, for people who just want to dabble in altered states (or for psychedelically hypersensitive people).
For serious researchers, the most important and useful substance is LSD, and I doubt that any substance will ever match it in "potency" -- it has the most extreme ratio of (intensity and duration) to quantity -- the most intensity and duration, for the least quantity.
>If you are talking about STRONGEST psychedelic effect Ibogaine or DMT/Harmine combination (=Ayahuasca) would be best.
People are wasting time searching for other substances, when LSD is as perfect a psychedelic as we're going to find. The quest for novelty becomes ridiculous when you already have a basically perfectly extreme solution.
>LSD and Liberty Caps I know very well. The visual and 'visionary' effects of high doses of LSD go far beyond those of high doses of Liberty Caps. Note that there is an important difference between visual effects and hallucinations: LSD doesn't easily create 'new realities' which are the interest of people like McKenna.
>Liberty Caps are very weak and not very visual compared to Psilocybe Cubensis and the King of all mushrooms Psilocybe Cyanescens. Psilocybe Cyanescens visuals go way beyond LSD and even Psilocybe Cubensis. You have got to give them a try, you'll love the visuals, lots of warping, lots of colors, melting effects, way more than LSD!
>The difference in potency of mushrooms arises due to micro-conditions. As the A.m. grows in a mychorizal (sp?) relationship with the roots of certain trees it could be predicted that the interchange of nurtients between the tree and mushroom would effect potency. Other factors might be soil moisture, soil nutrients, type of tree grown under, air temperature, air humidity, and maybe a few others. There are rumors of seasonal variation, this might have some truth because of the conditions that the time of year causes. When you get down to it your attempt to purchase the most potent Amanita's will rest on the luck of the draw. If you pick you own and live in an area that only has the A.m. variety formosa (yellow-capped) then make sure you can tell the difference between the varieties formosa and americana.
>From what I understand the Amanita pantherina would be the best one for the beginner. It causes less of the nausea. Also, the Amanita experience improves with each successive experimentation. The body becomes more ajusted to the toxins and the mind becomes more aware of the psychoactive nuances. If you are set on experiencing the ecstatic effects of Amanita you can not give up. Take you time ingesting small amounts to begin with (1-2 grams dried) and slowly work your way up to an effective dose for you. I would recommend that if you purchase a good amount that you take all the Amanita's and grind them up together. This will help set a standard potency. They can then be gel-capped, made into a tea, or even a transdermal ointment.
>I have heard that in combination with a MAOI you can lessen the dosage of A.m. and expect a slightly modified experience. I have even heard that this might be the basis of Soma (kind of a mix of the two prevalent theories about the make-up of Soma, but one that needs further experimentation.) Understand all precautions of MAOI before attempting such experimentation.
>The part about the MAO inhibitors can be confusing, since the active ingredient in A.M. (muscimol) is a GABA agonist and does not directly involve any of the neurotransmitters affected by MAO inhibition (serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine). I received the information about the A.m./MAOI combination from a Wiccan and book/herbcraft store clerk. The combo was made with P.h. seeds. She commented on how P.h. could be used to both cut in half the A.m. needed and effect the subjective state (how so I do not know as I have not repeated the experiment). I at first thought her comments were a misconception brought about by the new shroomahuasca knowledge, so I mentioned this. She stated that she was correct in her comments and that she and others in her Wiccan community have tried the A.m./P.h. combination with success. As to the comments that this combo could be the original Soma, that idea comes from one of my fellow VPLer's. He contacted J. Ott on the issue, but he was unimpressed by the idea. I have unfortunately not had the time to try the experience as I am a very busy man, but I do have 6-1/2 grams of A.m. and 2 grams P.h. in gel-caps ready to go when I find the time. I will post my experiences in the future.
Warning: Both A.m. and P.h. may cause unpleasant physical and psychological states. Please be aware of MAOI contraindications.
You can die from poisonous mushrooms. This could be considered an argument against psychoactive mushrooms, but of course, when considering the advantages of mushrooms over LSD, it is assumed that the mushrooms have been properly identified. But when buying street shrooms, they could be just as unhealthy as adulterated blotter. Finding an adulterated blotter does not mean that shrooms, in comparison, are always trustworthy. 'Natural' does not equal 'life-promoting'.
>Do mushrooms give you flashbacks?
Flashbacks don't happen from LSD any more than from any other life-shaking experience.
>Bad side effects?
Mushrooms contain alkaloids and substances besides psilocybin. Like absinthe, it's questionable just which chemicals have which effects. Mushrooms may actually be a blend of psychoactives. Some of these alkaloids might be unhealthy.
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