Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

> Terence told friends, “history’s going to end any day now.” Friends worried they’d “gone off the rails,” and Dennis later conceded they had a point.

I always imagine the recklessness of psychonauts like McKenna as something like dragging a high powered electromagnet across the skull to force altered states while doing who knows what to the membrane.

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#6

Post by zuzululu » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

i think his theory on novelty diminishing is bunk we are seeing more and more of it

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#7

Post by feoren » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

cj17382 wrote: post #4

It's important to have a spiritual practice to go alongside psychedelics to weather the ontological shock.

"Atheists are mentally incapable of handing psychedelics" is certainly a take.

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#8

Post by bobbiebarker2 » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

cj17382 wrote: post #4

It's important to have a spiritual practice to go alongside psychedelics to weather the ontological shock.

Good crutch for the weak. I've tripped plenty of times; I'm an atheist; it was great. Next time you trip, you should reflect on your need for "spirituality" and what it says about whatever is going on or not going on between your ears. One of the most amazing things about humans is their imagination and ability to convince themselves of almost anything. In my opinion, one of the points of doing psychedelics is to recapture your own imagination and flush out all the BS that other people have put in there to capture your mind. And here you are telling people to pour more programming back in there in the form of "spirituality."

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#9

Post by poncho_romero » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

bobbiebarker2 wrote: post #8

cj17382 wrote: post #4

It's important to have a spiritual practice to go alongside psychedelics to weather the ontological shock.

Good crutch for the weak. I've tripped plenty of times; I'm an atheist; it was great. Next time you trip, you should reflect on your need for "spirituality" and what it says about whatever is going on or not going on between your ears. One of the most amazing things about humans is their imagination and ability to convince themselves of almost anything. In my opinion, one of the points of doing psychedelics is to rec…

I'm surprised someone as enlightened as yourself can't imagine a person coming to spirituality themselves.

Re: Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

#10

Post by CamperBob2 » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

neuralkoi wrote: post #5

> Terence told friends, “history’s going to end any day now.” Friends worried they’d “gone off the rails,” and Dennis later conceded they had a point. I always imagine the recklessness of psychonauts like McKenna as something like dragging a high powered electromagnet across the skull to force altered states while doing who knows what to the membrane.

Every time I read about either tDCS or psychedelics, I'm reminded of altering random hex values in games on my Apple II+ as a kid. One tweak got me a score of 100,000,000 in Falcons, and the screen dump made for nice bragging rights on the school bus the next morning. The next one crashed the game and wrote a bad sector to the floppy.