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The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

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Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#51
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just break the law. Are you seriously going to let the government tell you what you can and cannot put into your body?

How can you get a known safe drug if it's illegal? If I buy a box of processed food at Walmart I can be pretty damn sure that it is what it says it is. Not so for illicit drugs.

"How can you get a known safe drug if it's illegal?"

This is a great and very important question. There'd be a lot fewer deaths and adverse reactions if more people took it seriously.

For one, you could study chemistry and pharmacology and synthesize the compounds yourself.

Second, you could test the compounds you got. There are testing kits you can buy and testing services (like those done by DanceSafe at festivals), but while they can test for known compounds, they can't test for unknown ones (like many of the new designer drugs that aren't well known yet)... and they generally don't test for potency either.

Third, you could grow or pick some natural psychedelics, like mushrooms, cacti, and various plants. You have to be really careful with this and really know what you're doing or rely on someone who does. Alan Rockefeller's talks on identifying psilocybin mushrooms are great for this: [1]

Fourth, some psychedelics like morning glory seeds, hawaiian baby woodrose seeds, salvia divinorum, and ketamine can be acquired legally in many places. 5-MeO-DMT itself is legal in some places. So where these are legal you should be more assured of their safety -- though you'll still want to make sure the seeds are pesticide-free, for example.

Finally, anyone who cares about safety should be advocating legalization, as it's keeping these substances illegal that makes them less safe and leads to many unnecessary deaths and overdoses.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever hit rock bottom? Have you ever not wanted to exist anymore? I have, and it was terminal. Do you know what saved me? DMT. DMT saves my life. And every time I wanted it to end and I chose a pipe before going through with it, I was saved again. DMT taught me many things, but most of all it taught me how to love myself and how to love life. Mushrooms reinforced those lessons. It took me from poverty to usin…

Hey there, just wanted to chime in as someone who has both used psychedelics (have used all of those being discussed here) to facilitate long lasting change in my life and who also strongly agrees with the idea that there is no real enlightenment to be found by using drugs. There was a good quote from Alan Watts regarding this that I’ve carried with me for years: “When you get the answer, hang up the phone.” - which…

"When you get the answer, hang up the phone."

I think it was Ram Dass who responded: "I don't hang up on a teacher."

And what if there's more than one answer? Or what if you've forgotten the answer?

Sometimes what you get is not an answer but an experience, or a communion with the sacred or a transcendent reality which is ineffable and can't be brought back to the ordinary world.

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#53

5-MeO was extremely well known in 2013. It had already been featured multiple times on every psychedelic podcast, and there were multiple books about it. This whole article seems vaguely fake to me.

I'd bet anything that the overwhelming majority of people in the world have never heard of it, and don't listen to psychedelic podcasts either.

Sure. But it doesn't change what the other users said, a journalist could have researched all this.

Can someone explain this new psychedelic drug craze to me btw? Most of the people who're into it and tell me about the medicinal use of psychedelics seem to have very little experience with any of these drugs themself. The whole thing gives off cultish vibes to me.

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#54
post #37

Even though I have never used drugs, psychedelics are the one thing I have wanted to try, particularly LSD. Sadly, it seems that it is not legal anywhere I can find.

There have been multiple studies showing that on powerful enough doses even very experienced users can't tell the difference between the various classic psychedelics. That's not a definite conclusion, but it seems reason enough not to necessarily hanker over one specific psychedelic if you've never done any of them. You'll probably have a profound enough experience on any classic psychedelic. By the way, cannabis can…

i find that hard/impossible to believe.

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#55
post #37

Even though I have never used drugs, psychedelics are the one thing I have wanted to try, particularly LSD. Sadly, it seems that it is not legal anywhere I can find.

There have been multiple studies showing that on powerful enough doses even very experienced users can't tell the difference between the various classic psychedelics. That's not a definite conclusion, but it seems reason enough not to necessarily hanker over one specific psychedelic if you've never done any of them. You'll probably have a profound enough experience on any classic psychedelic. By the way, cannabis can…

Weed is not a classical psychedelic, and if you smoke enough weed to get strong psychedelic effects you're likely to run into panic attacks, hypotension, nausea etc.

A few states are legalizing psilocybin, that'd be the way to go.

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#56
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drugs do not lead to enlightenment. They do not lead to some hidden knowledge. This reminds me of something near the end of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas": > We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the 60s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that w…

"A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the acid culture: The desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel." I'd rather take my chances with the acid culture than with the alcohol culture. At least there's potential for profound positive healing, empathy for others, and deep contact wit…

> I'd rather take my chances with the acid culture than with the alcohol culture.

That sounds like a false dichotomy, unless you have some data to support that?

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#57
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just break the law. Are you seriously going to let the government tell you what you can and cannot put into your body?

How can you get a known safe drug if it's illegal? If I buy a box of processed food at Walmart I can be pretty damn sure that it is what it says it is. Not so for illicit drugs.

You can buy testing kits on amazon and such to test your drugs. These are not illegal to poses iirc

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever hit rock bottom? Have you ever not wanted to exist anymore? I have, and it was terminal. Do you know what saved me? DMT. DMT saves my life. And every time I wanted it to end and I chose a pipe before going through with it, I was saved again. DMT taught me many things, but most of all it taught me how to love myself and how to love life. Mushrooms reinforced those lessons. It took me from poverty to usin…

Hey there, just wanted to chime in as someone who has both used psychedelics (have used all of those being discussed here) to facilitate long lasting change in my life and who also strongly agrees with the idea that there is no real enlightenment to be found by using drugs. There was a good quote from Alan Watts regarding this that I’ve carried with me for years: “When you get the answer, hang up the phone.” - which…

A good reminder in general, but I don’t think it’s universally applicable. DMT no longer “works” for me, and my course & role is known. There is no tail chasing here. But “drugs” are just a tool to fix the sickness imbued by a very broken social structure present here. It won’t give you “enlightenment” or whatever it is you’re after, but it will set you on the path which would otherwise be inaccessible.

That path demands a lot relative to what we think we need to do to thrive. It requires a lot of work to become simple, a lot of resolve, and a lot of comfort with self. And you often lose course, especially when revisiting mass society for any duration — and in those cases, revisiting psychedelics are very beneficial.

Alan Watts wasn’t alone. He had community and an environment that enabled him to say those things and think that way. He was outside the prison of ordinary society and could afford to hang up. His original audience could also afford that. Most of us cannot.

People in ordinary society need reminders external. Anyone still asleep or just partially awake needs reminders, otherwise the system will make you forget and you’ll be consumed again.

Morally speaking, I don’t view psychedelics as “drugs”. I view them as respecting elders and listening to the original masters; a communion with the plants and the Earth. They all originate from the plants and Earth — psilocybin, from mushrooms; LSD from ergot (a fungi); mescaline from the cactus (a prickly desert thriver, with a warm and soft guiding soul); DMT from nearly every plant and animal alive (the truth is hidden inside all of is); 5-meo-dmt from the Sonoran desert toads and poison tree frogs…and many more, many undiscovered. Knowing these masters requires a level of species evolution and a respect for the elders, the true elders. They do not have human faces or forms, they are alien relative to us and what we have become.

Just as I would always listen to my late grandparents when they had stories to share, and my parents when they have the same, or as I listen to a monk share their story and spend time helping when visiting their temples (of any belief), listening to their lessons, I listen to the stories and wisdom of these plants. Not for fun; not for “enlightenment”; not for power; not in fear or shame or dogma or rigidity; but simply because they are speaking. And when an ancient elder speaks, you ought to stop what you’re doing for a moment and listen. They might just help you in ways you never knew you needed.

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet anything that the overwhelming majority of people in the world have never heard of it, and don't listen to psychedelic podcasts either.

Sure. But it doesn't change what the other users said, a journalist could have researched all this. Can someone explain this new psychedelic drug craze to me btw? Most of the people who're into it and tell me about the medicinal use of psychedelics seem to have very little experience with any of these drugs themself. The whole thing gives off cultish vibes to me.

Take a look at the hundreds of new research papers on psychedelics which have been published over the last decade. That's at the root of the "psychedelic renaissance". The renewed interest in psychedelics in the general population stems from that research, which has been widely reported in the mainstream media.

People are also becoming aware of the healing powers of cannabis, believing less in the Reefer Madness-type anti-cannabis propaganda from yesteryear, knowing people who use cannabis or using it themselves and seeing that it didn't ruin their life and was actually kind of fun/helpful, and seeing that the sky didn't fall when cannabis was effectively legalized all over the place. They understand the same could happen with psychedelics.

Also, psychedelics have been widely used at music festivals and raves, and there's been a lot of ayahuasca tourism and other psychedelic tourism in recent decades.. which leads me to believe that you're hanging out with the wrong crowd if the people you know don't have much experience with psychedelics. There have been many millions of people who've used them. Their use is not a media myth.

As for cultishness, there's a little of that, but I'd call it more of a health fad than a cult. Fortunately there's a lot of research showing that this particular health fad actually works to help a lot of people, unlike a lot of other health fads.

I am concerned that widespread religious use of psychedelics could eventually lead to a small minority of people getting fanatical, self-righteous, and destructive (ala Manson's own cult, Jonestown, or the various religious wars that have been fought throughout history), but I'm not aware of anything like that happening yet.

Re: The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

#60
post #37

Even though I have never used drugs, psychedelics are the one thing I have wanted to try, particularly LSD. Sadly, it seems that it is not legal anywhere I can find.

I thought it was legal in Amsterdam?

It's definitely not. Last time I went there, even magic mushrooms had been made illegal, although apparently a loophole was found that allowed the sale of psychedelic truffles.

Even cannabis is illegal there, although it has been decriminalised for personal use, and its sale is tolerated under certain conditions.

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