Silk Road forums
Discussion => Drug safety => Topic started by: psychonauts on August 15, 2012, 10:09 am
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i know about acid, dmt and shrooms. but, now that i'm on SR, i want to see what else is out there. what do you recommend? and if it's addictive, please note that too, because i have an addictive personality. thanks!
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I'll preface this by saying that I love my psychedelics, but I don't consider them to be very spiritual for me. I'm not an overly spiritual person in my everyday life, and so my drug experiences aren't either. The extent of spirituality is connecting with animals on a deeper level than normal, but even that's not really anything.
Anyway, I would suggest the 2C series of chemicals if you're looking form something new. 2C-I was nice when I tried it, bit of a body load to it, but the more straight forward thought patterns (compared to LSD) was helpful when working through somethings I didn't want to get distracted from.
I hear 2C-B is good as well (maybe even gentler than 2C-I) but I haven't had a chance to try this as yet.
Check out Erowid for more info about these if you're interested (good to know what you're in for ahead of time...)
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For your spiritual side the general advice would be
Ayahuasca, mescaline, pure DMT, LSD, shooms, all are self regulating in one form or another., and chemically non addictive. Because a drug is non addictive doesn't mean that it doesn't have downsides.
Even ones that put you in touch with God.
Go and surf the DMT nexus and Erowid for your sources of good quality information on entheogens.
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thanks guys, now i have some new drugs to look into!
The extent of spirituality is connecting with animals on a deeper level than normal, but even that's not really anything.
thanks, dude. you're more spiritual thank you realize, btw. being aware of that connection with animals (and plants, rocks, stars and the universe) might be the biggest part of the spiritual experience i'm talking about. check out this alan watts lecture some time when you're up for a head trip, he talks a lot about this stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t4W23fRSLY
edit: this one is more apropo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJyT7WkRcZg (the alchemy of lsd)
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Drugs are not a pathway to spirituality. They aren't even a glimpse or a doorway.
Saying so may help ease your guilty enjoyment of them though, and even convince girls that you are deep enough to have sex with.
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Drugs are not a pathway to spirituality. They aren't even a glimpse or a doorway.
Saying so may help ease your guilty enjoyment of them though, and even convince girls that you are deep enough to have sex with.
i wonder how you can be so sure of that. let me give you an example, which you can further research on clearnet. alan watts, whom i spoke of above, was himself surprised to see that LSD gave him much the same moksha experience that he got from years of eastern study and meditation. look into it if the topic suits you, i think you'll be surprised!
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I'll preface this by saying that I love my psychedelics, but I don't consider them to be very spiritual for me. I'm not an overly spiritual person in my everyday life, and so my drug experiences aren't either. The extent of spirituality is connecting with animals on a deeper level than normal, but even that's not really anything.
Anyway, I would suggest the 2C series of chemicals if you're looking form something new. 2C-I was nice when I tried it, bit of a body load to it, but the more straight forward thought patterns (compared to LSD) was helpful when working through somethings I didn't want to get distracted from.
I hear 2C-B is good as well (maybe even gentler than 2C-I) but I haven't had a chance to try this as yet.
Check out Erowid for more info about these if you're interested (good to know what you're in for ahead of time...)
2c-b is a very nice drug, I wouldn't say it gave me any spiritual experiences or encounters, but I would say its extremely sensual and when I went for a walk into a forest I felt 'at one' and in touch with the wildlife and nature itself, its hard to describe.
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Drugs are not a pathway to spirituality. They aren't even a glimpse or a doorway.
Saying so may help ease your guilty enjoyment of them though, and even convince girls that you are deep enough to have sex with.
i wonder how you can be so sure of that. let me give you an example, which you can further research on clearnet. alan watts, whom i spoke of above, was himself surprised to see that LSD gave him much the same moksha experience that he got from years of eastern study and meditation. look into it if the topic suits you, i think you'll be surprised!
First you'd have to prove that "moksha experience" via meditation is a spiritual experience and not simply a pleasant mindfulness.
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Drugs are not a pathway to spirituality. They aren't even a glimpse or a doorway.
Saying so may help ease your guilty enjoyment of them though, and even convince girls that you are deep enough to have sex with.
This. +1
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thanks guys, now i have some new drugs to look into!
The extent of spirituality is connecting with animals on a deeper level than normal, but even that's not really anything.
thanks, dude. you're more spiritual thank you realize, btw. being aware of that connection with animals (and plants, rocks, stars and the universe) might be the biggest part of the spiritual experience i'm talking about. check out this alan watts lecture some time when you're up for a head trip, he talks a lot about this stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t4W23fRSLY
edit: this one is more apropo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJyT7WkRcZg (the alchemy of lsd)
I always try to keep an open mind so yeah, I will at least check it out. Thanks mate :)
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First you'd have to prove that "moksha experience" via meditation is a spiritual experience and not simply a pleasant mindfulness.
i don't *have* to prove anything, you can research it on clearnet if you like. all it takes is some google/wikipedia searches.
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2Cs are good.
but TheBusiness said it better than anybody here.
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In my experience spirtual trips are based around setting. I'm not a traditionally spiritual person, yet sometimes ill have a unexpected powerful spiritual experience out of nowhere whilst tripping. I've heard from a few LSD veterans that the visuals of a trip are very distracting and in order to maximize the spiritual aspect of it your vision must be obscured. A few tips they've mentioned are to use a blindfold (but keep a friend near by, or even better, a spouse or loved one), or to turn all of the lights off. My most spiritual experience with psychedelics was outside in the middle of the day, playing my bass guitar while my other two friends played their respective instruments ( drums and guitar). So if you play a musical instrument its something to consider. Also, please don't keep upping your doses chasing a spiritual trip, you may end up with an experience you find less than ideal.
Be safe.
Shifty
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entheogens
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Drugs are not a pathway to spirituality. They aren't even a glimpse or a doorway.
Saying so may help ease your guilty enjoyment of them though, and even convince girls that you are deep enough to have sex with.
Have to respectfully disagree with this, and know many others who would also disagree. For evidence, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Mystical_experiences, particularly the study by Johns Hopkins.
The thing with a spiritual experience is, if a person says they've had one, then they have almost by definition had one. It is not for anyone else to say otherwise. Granted, that person may later revise his feelings about the experience. However, quoting from the Wikipedia article re the Johns Hopkins study:
A followup study conducted 14 months after the original psilocybin session confirmed that participants continued to attribute deep personal meaning to the experience. Almost one-third of the subjects reported that the experience was the single most meaningful or spiritually significant event of their lives, and over two-thirds reported it among their five most spiritually significant events.
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You still have to make a distinction between a "spiritual" experience and a pleasant one.
Just because people felt profoundly insightful, and found "deep meaning", there's little to indicate proof of the divine or metaphysical in these studies. If anything, that fact that these feelings can be induced through chemistry is proof they are manifested in the physical brain.
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If anything, that fact that these feelings can be induced through chemistry is proof they are manifested in the physical brain.
I think spirituality is just a name we give to the collective of our deepest thoughts and feelings. Some of these combinations of thoughts and feelings are not usually accessed by our conscious minds, but during significant times in our lives, and whilst under the influence of certain substances, we catch a glimpse of these seemingly new parts of our mind and being. Whether we attribute it to something metaphysical or something tangible such as chemicals in the brain, its still a prevalent part of our lives and can greatly influence our world-views. This being the case I think that we should focus on the benefits that "spirituality" can provide whether they are divinely influenced or only illusions of divinity.
Be safe
Shifty
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Yeh +1 Shifty, tend to agree. Ultimately it can be a wholly edifying and insightful experience - whether or not it is technically "spiritual" in the "entheogen" sense of the word. The human mind is awe inspiring.
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Spirituality means something regarding the fundamental essence of consciousness. Any time we choose to live or make decisions in a self-aware way, we open the door to spiritual experiences—experiences where we are exceptionally aware of the fact that we are living.
The nature of psychedelic drugs is to alter consciousness quickly. Because consciousness only notices changes in things, psychedelic drugs can give some people a more direct route to seriously confronting questions about the nature of existence, the self, and what reality is like.
Sex, the creation of art, and practices such as meditation and "metaprogramming" can, if we so choose, allow us to more fully exalt, and even surpass, the usual capacity of our being. These "peak experiences" happen when your mind is significantly undergoing a decrease in entropy, and becoming a more well-ordered, simple and efficient system.
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Well .. to be clear the etymology of "spiritual" is the latin "spiritus" which literally means "ghost" or "soul". It has always referred to the afterlife or non-physical. New-agers have picked up that, inferring that the non physical "soul" is responsible for your consciousness.
I don't believe in ghosts, so I disagree with that, which is my core problem with the word "spiritual".
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On topic:
I found mescaline was pretty powerful, and reasonably benign. We prepared it from San Pedro cactus during the day, and took it at dusk. It tasted most foul, the onset was a challenge, and the trip was encompassing and engrossing, and everyone claimed to have taken away useful experiences and lessons. There were some manageably terrifying experiences, and they were useful too, but largely the trip was benign, and seemed to predispose us to thoughts about nature. Best experiences were in an isolated forest with no risk of interruption by outsiders who weren't tripping.
The one person who took it "for fun" said it certainly wasn't the fun he'd expected.
Urban environments were more challenging, but provided the house had a decent garden for when there was a compulsion to see living green things it was OK.
None of us had any compulsion to take it again quickly, and this is apparently the typical response.
Rambling on, around, or near the topic:
Drugs are not a pathway to spirituality. They aren't even a glimpse or a doorway.
That gives rise to curiosity about your feelings on spirituality. Taken as a single statement we could surmise that you think spirituality is hocus pocus, or perhaps that it's tied to a church, synagogue, mosque or other type of temple.
Care to hold forth on your interpretation of spirituality? All bullshit? Evolutionary leftover from attaching additional significance from felling a mammoth? Only available through an anointed and official priestly conduit to God? Found only in the forest, miles from home?
I'm curious.
Saying so may help ease your guilty enjoyment of them though, and even convince girls that you are deep enough to have sex with.
That genuinely got an appreciative laugh. I think it's entirely true for some people, too.
Have to respectfully disagree with this, and know many others who would also disagree. For evidence, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Mystical_experiences, particularly the study by Johns Hopkins.
Nicely put, and a great reference. I think the subjective interpretation and application of import by the person who experienced it is the most salient point.
The thing with a spiritual experience is, if a person says they've had one, then they have almost by definition had one.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging is one of the newer tools being applied to the investigation of what people term spirituality. One group were seeking the involvement of nuns prone to "holy visions" to try to establish what was going on in the brain at a macro level when an event deemed to be of spiritual importance occurred. I think the investigation of the neurological science of spirituality is going to be fascinating. Warped scrying glass firmly affixed, visible futures include a sense of deep spiritual satisfaction form paying one's taxes. Having the instruments to make a clinically sensible decision about one's life trajectory and experience ecstatic bliss from executing the necessary actions even if they are boring. Alteration of the would-be psychopath such that they extract fulfillment from gardening. Absolution of tax-free status from commercial organisations using spirituality to avoid their fiscal obligations to society.
ahem.
A followup study conducted 14 months after the original psilocybin session confirmed that participants continued to attribute deep personal meaning to the experience. Almost one-third of the subjects reported that the experience was the single most meaningful or spiritually significant event of their lives, and over two-thirds reported it among their five most spiritually significant events.
So, are these people all wrong, or is spirituality in the mind of the beholder? Do some or all people need spiritual experiences, or are they just making up for personal deficiencies?
Well .. to be clear the etymology of "spiritual" is the latin "spiritus" which literally means "ghost" or "soul". It has always referred to the afterlife or non-physical.
Ah, so it's down to etymology. I'd dearly love it if people would just agree that the latin root of a word decides its meaning and boundaries in pepertuity, but with spoken languages being constantly in flux this desire of mine is going to go unfulfilled. But if we dig up our Paterson and McNaughton or other Latin reference we find that spiritus is a fourth declension noun and carried the meanings of breath, character, and deportment/essence/composure. Taking the etymological route we could say that spiritual pertains to the essence of things just as much as it strictly means the ghost or relates to the afterlife.
Etymology aside, often when I see the word spiritual it's being used by someone describing a mild sense of satisfaction derived from having spent money to be involved in a tradition or practice that has a lot of underlying meaning to the people who engendered it, and very little to the person who's paid to be there. I wouldn't call what they're doing spiritual; more trying to ascribe meaning and import because they feel their life has very little. I remain open to the idea that my perception is completely off, and it is a big deal to them. And if so, then I guess it's genuinely spiritual, in the sense that marcopolo described.
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Drugs are not a pathway to spirituality. They aren't even a glimpse or a doorway.
That gives rise to curiosity about your feelings on spirituality. Taken as a single statement we could surmise that you think spirituality is hocus pocus, or perhaps that it's tied to a church, synagogue, mosque or other type of temple.
Care to hold forth on your interpretation of spirituality? All bullshit? Evolutionary leftover from attaching additional significance from felling a mammoth? Only available through an anointed and official priestly conduit to God? Found only in the forest, miles from home?
I'm curious.
Ah, so it's down to etymology. I'd dearly love it if people would just agree that the latin root of a word decides its meaning and boundaries in pepertuity, but with spoken languages being constantly in flux this desire of mine is going to go unfulfilled. But if we dig up our Paterson and McNaughton or other Latin reference we find that spiritus is a fourth declension noun and carried the meanings of breath, character, and deportment/essence/composure. Taking the etymological route we could say that spiritual pertains to the essence of things just as much as it strictly means the ghost or relates to the afterlife.
Etymology aside, often when I see the word spiritual it's being used by someone describing a mild sense of satisfaction derived from having spent money to be involved in a tradition or practice that has a lot of underlying meaning to the people who engendered it, and very little to the person who's paid to be there. I wouldn't call what they're doing spiritual; more trying to ascribe meaning and import because they feel their life has very little. I remain open to the idea that my perception is completely off, and it is a big deal to them. And if so, then I guess it's genuinely spiritual, in the sense that marcopolo described.
Nice summary mercury solid. I definitely agree with you about the way language has morphed the usage of the word spirituality over time, and many aren't actually thinking about its root in the divine, the "spirit" world or "soul" at all. It's a shame because the english language has lots of other less misunderstood words to describe emotional well being, or even a deep personal connection with nature and/or reality at large. You are a cunning linguist, I'm sure you would know many!
As for my take, I don't believe in a soul, or an afterlife or a personal / creator god and related dogma. I do however recognize the profound experience drugs can have on the user, but don't attribute them to any extra-sensory properties. Rather the opposite, like a faulty video card - the picture get's distorted, interesting and may even reveal hints of its underlying software and hardware, but ultimately it's pretty noise.
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Nice summary mercury solid. I definitely agree with you about the way language has morphed the usage of the word spirituality over time, and many aren't actually thinking about its root in the divine, the "spirit" world or "soul" at all. It's a shame because the english language has lots of other less misunderstood words to describe emotional well being, or even a deep personal connection with nature and/or reality at large. You are a cunning linguist, I'm sure you would know many!
I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and suggest that perhaps you have the same revolted response as I to this modern day contrivance, the Wellness Clinic.
I grew up in a devout Roman Catholic family, and played an active role in the church for a year or so after I'd decided there was no god in the sense that the parishioners meant, but I did witness a few people in and around church having what I still feel is an experience of a spiritual nature.
I don't think their transfixed agonies and ecstasies have anything to do with some plaster depiction of a dude nail unceremoniously to a tree, but more to do with the need in some people to experience heightened emotional states.
The meanings I now hang on the word spiritual are probably less ambivalently termed mysticism, having the character of the little magic that comes from standing with your back to a hot fire, eyes cast up to the stars, with glimpses of the insignificance of the scale of a single person against the backdrop of all that other matter out there.
As for my take, I don't believe in a soul, or an afterlife or a personal / creator god and related dogma. I do however recognize the profound experience drugs can have on the user, but don't attribute them to any extra-sensory properties. Rather the opposite, like a faulty video card - the picture get's distorted, interesting and may even reveal hints of its underlying software and hardware, but ultimately it's pretty noise.
It's an interesting position. I used to know a neurologist whose special area of interest was in chemically or electrically stimulating or retarding parts of the brain in order to try to get a grip on the subjective function of the different chunks of meat doing what we like to call thinking. I think he'd have liked your notion of glimpsing the hardware and software underneath.
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Well .. to be clear the etymology of "spiritual" is the latin "spiritus" which literally means "ghost" or "soul". It has always referred to the afterlife or non-physical. New-agers have picked up that, inferring that the non physical "soul" is responsible for your consciousness.
I don't believe in ghosts, so I disagree with that, which is my core problem with the word "spiritual".
It's not something you really believe in, it's something you empirically experience. Just one year ago I saw no evidence of and did not believe in the existence of a "soul" (which seemed like a supernatural notion), but more recently, I see it every day.
As Whitehead said, understanding is the apperception of reality pattern as such. Two people can view the same reality, and one may see deeper patterns quicker than the other. It is normal and common to be able to sense a pattern that a friend cannot—even if you try to explain it to them. Often we are looking in different directions. Communication, and the beauty of language allow us to share and exchange patterns— but only to those who have an earnest desire to apprehend that new pattern which was not previously part of their concept of reality. It is very difficult (likely impossible), to teach somebody something they do not want to learn.
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that fact that these feelings can be induced through chemistry is proof they are manifested in the physical brain.
All thoughts are chemically conditioned and occur within the physical brain, including scientific thought, including everyday waking experience, including the mystical experiences of devout Buddhists and Hindus, the Sufis of Islam, Christian mystics, etc., etc. Therefore, to point to a chemical causation of an experience, in refutation of its claim to spiritual validity, is absurd and arbitrary. All thoughts, whether good or bad, true or false, are neurochemically conditioned.
Spirituality can be experienced either through psychedelics, or through meditation and discipline. It can also happen spontaneously without the use of drugs (so-called mystical psychosis). I had my first spiritual experience at the age of 20, long before I tried any psychedelic drugs, and the experience was identical to the central element of my best LSD trips -- ego death, loss of boundaries between self and environment, the disintegration of the "I" making way for the eternal and spiritual "not-I", a timeless awareness and unitive knowledge of the Eternal Now and divine Ground of all existence. But these are all loathsome abstractions: language cannot describe a spiritual experience. It can happen on LSD, and it can also happen through spiritual training and spontaneous religious experiences.
Anyone seeking to have a spiritual experience with psychedelics should do so in conjunction with discipline and meditation.
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"I do however recognize the profound experience drugs can have on the user, but don't attribute them to any extra-sensory properties. Rather the opposite, like a faulty video card - the picture get's distorted, interesting and may even reveal hints of its underlying software and hardware, but ultimately it's pretty noise."
Business, have you tried LSD? I've done it multiple times and I'm pretty sure the visuals are not "faults" but rather results of the drug improving somehow my brain when under the influence. For example certain pictures that make absolutely no sense when sober, come alive in something better than 3D when on Lucy, and I have this cross referenced with people who were also high with me at the time. What is more, we all saw the exact same things in these stills which goes to show we were not all imagining different things, but instead we were all seeing more clearly for the first time. The video in question is this: (try watching when on LSD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpKXnrmwNT8
All in all LSD for me is a kind of "shortcut" to a spiritual experience. There are other ways I have come close (namely meditation) but LSD - Weed simply remove many barriers much faster and I reach my dharma place every time - a place where all my life questions are solved the moment I put them in my head :)
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"I do however recognize the profound experience drugs can have on the user, but don't attribute them to any extra-sensory properties. Rather the opposite, like a faulty video card - the picture get's distorted, interesting and may even reveal hints of its underlying software and hardware, but ultimately it's pretty noise."
Business, have you tried LSD? I've done it multiple times and I'm pretty sure the visuals are not "faults" but rather results of the drug improving somehow my brain when under the influence.
I should apologise, I just realised how arrogant I've been sounding. I copped some negative karma for my opinions and I don't mean to offend anyone or diminish anyone's personal revalations.
Yes, I know Lucy. We're old friends from way back. And did you read my recent 2-CB trip report? I've been there, bought the tie-dyed t-shirt.
It's interesting how the same molecule can affect us in similar ways and yet we draw totally separate conclusions. If you really could look at the divine, I think it would be hard to deny it, but I just haven't experienced anything "spiritual". I've have amazingly mind blowing universe connecting, awe inspiring, ego dissolving, life changing experiences .. but spiritual? No.
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Just about every drug (in the appropriate dosage) can give you a spiritual experience, for a given value of spiritual. It really depends a lot on what you expect from such an experience. I suspect that very few people with no idea about spiritual stuff call their experiences spiritual. Maybe insightful, maybe just balls awesome. Spiritual people call those experiences spiritual because that's their deal. The things that we see on a trip might not directly be within our control, but we do control how we interpret them. Our internal psychology will determine how we do that.
It's like an ink blot test. Show the same things to four different people, one of them sees clouds, one sees their father, one sees jesus and another sees rob zombie. All these things do is tell you more about yourself. If you believe there is some degree of divinity in human kind (either as gods children, as part of the greater whole of nature or whatever else) then gleaning understanding of yourself brings you closer to the divine, and thus is religious. If you don't believe that, but are philosophically inclined, then self-knowledge is worthwhile per se. If you are just a hedonist, then pretty pictures are fun.
No drug can show you the face of god, sorry. But they can make you think about yourself and by extension the nature and role of a god in new and interesting ways.
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Not sure if this is helpful, but I've done psychedelics loads, and nothing has ever quite compared to the psychedelic breakthrough I had on 600ug of 25I-NBOMe and 11mg of 2C-B. It changed me forever. ;D
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Very good point l0574l0ne, coming to think about it I twice did LSD with a friend, the same batch, experiencing the same things, but it seemed that I was on higher planes than him all the time with the major difference between us that I'm generally more into continuously developing my spiritual side while he is into drugs purely for the fun aspect of them. So when I was having revelations that pushed my high higher higher he was still grounded cause he never put the right seeds in his mind to trigger any sort of revelation. In contrast, with some more spiritual friends I've done LSD with the experience was much stronger for them, and they helped bring me even higher. So there seems to be some relation to how "spiritual" or "high frequency" a person is already in his life for what LSD will do for him. It's the same concept why they say it's good to cleanse yourself (both mind and body) before you trip.. you prepare your self to be in the best form to receive whatever it is that we receive through LSD.
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It's interesting how the same molecule can affect us in similar ways and yet we draw totally separate conclusions. If you really could look at the divine, I think it would be hard to deny it, but I just haven't experienced anything "spiritual". I've have amazingly mind blowing universe connecting, awe inspiring, ego dissolving, life changing experiences .. but spiritual? No.
I think we may be both starting from the same revelations (the highs the LSD starts taking us) and we differ maybe in our interpretation. What you call awe inspiring, ego dissolving, life changing, are all proofs for me for the divine and spiritual. For example when my ego dissolves and I cannot distinguish between people, it's just another way to experience what all spiritual leaders mean when they say that "we are all one". And just making this realization then the trip becomes even stronger for me and so on.
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I first took mushrooms when I was 15-16 and spent 5 hours just thinking about everything. During the trip, I understood that animals feel pain and want to survive just as much as I do, and this lead to me no longer consuming meat. I've also experienced ego death, and taking mushrooms has enabled me to feel more of a connection with and respect for the Earth.
I believe that these chemicals should be treated with respect, and I've known people who took them merely for shits and gigs and were unprepared for what they experienced.