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Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)

psychedelics.community

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

#81

Post by burnto »

> A further factor was cannabis. Attempts to quit left him feeling stranded in a “horribly profane” world, with a “tremendous narrowing of consciousness.” Substances that once served exploration soon functioned as psychological maintenance. “He just needed to be high on cannabis,” Harrison said. “That was his medicine… what drove everything,” keeping him from “bouncing off the ceiling.”

Clearly there were a number of factors contributing to his difficulties, but this sounds like it may be an underestimated one, maybe more than the mushrooms even. Cannabis dependency really can sneak up on people, and for some it’s quite difficult to get off it, with real physical and emotional symptoms.

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

#82

Post by nowittyusername »

Yeah... this made me reflect on my own bad trips decades past. I havent done4 many psychedelics only a handful, but I did have what one could call a bad trip or 2... maybe. It didn't look like it on the outside but internally it was profound. One in particular stood out that had me inhabit this universe but all semblance of emotional ties were cut from that reality, I am sure I would have felt pure terror if i was able to feel anything at the time. odd thing for sure as I am describing a horrible experience from memory but at the time i was unable to feel anything at all. An emotional echo of sorts i guess.... well anyways I do think that experience had a profound affect as the "nothing matters" sentiment stuck around since then. For a long time now I thought I peered in to "the void of reality" but thinking on it objectively now, maybe that was a assumption wrongfully borrowed from a bad trip. After all why should the natural state of things be so bereft of anything. If anything the universe is capable of being witnessed only through the eyes of a subjective observer... Bah anyways ive rambled for long enough. Good read.

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

#83

Post by N_Lens »

semolino wrote: post #38
pfannkuchen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m also an atheist, but just looking at the huge amount of anthropological information we have, from hunter gatherer bands to large scale civilizations, I am quite sure that a perception of god-like and spirit-like entities is built into the hardware layer in humans. That doesn’t make them “real”, of course, but it doesn’t seem to matter much whether or not they are real, and deleting them from life because they are…

Yes, perception of entities during psychedelic experience is unhinged paredolia: psychedelic substances obliterate the squelch for our pattern recognition systems, of which paredolia is one. Deepdream slugdogs are sort of a synthetic analogue to this.

I’m glad that you’ve got it all figured out!

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

#84

Post by shlant »

vanillax wrote: post #20
xvxvx wrote: post #16

I remember discovering McKenna in the late 90’s when I first got internet access at home. The comparison with Alex Jones is a good one: he was initially very interesting, sparking the imagination that whole worlds existed out there that I didn’t know about. But quickly it fell apart and I understood it was just horseshit, a form of fantasy. I’ve never tripped but it sounds similar to fever dreams I had a few times wh…

Pretty terrible take if you compare tripping to a bad fever dream.

as someone who has a good amount of experience with psychedelics - there is actually a surprising amount of overlap between the two experiences, but mostly in a generalized "how they can feel" way, and not in the sense that they are the same type of experience.

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

#85

Post by shlant »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #30

This movement had a movement but now it's over. They failed to stop capitalism and effective altruists from taking over the cultural lexicon. Now I can't go anywhere without hearing about Roko's Basilisk.

> They failed to stop capitalism

good thing, too!

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

#86

Post by t-3 »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #68
t-3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?

I can see how they mean "the search for the unknown" in itself is already some sort of spirituality.

It doesn't have to be. Searching out the unknown is seeking out new knowledge, seeking to diminish ignorance. You don't need to believe in higher powers or anything like that to search for new knowledge. Spirituality is a shortcut to a unverifiable, unfalsifiable knowledge that some explanation for phenomena exists, but not at all the kind of thing anyone actually interested in truth or expanding their own knowledge would use to explain anything.

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

#87

Post by iammjm »

Mixing mushrooms and cannabis can lead to some seriously weird places, just read some reports on erowid.org. And Terrance did that repeatedly.

I did this once and ended up completely languageless for a moment, like unable to write and speak at all. Then I would have very intense visions so I would try to close my eyes but alas! my eyes have been closed this whole time. Then there were black holes eating up my field on vision, like clusters of dead pixels on a computer screen, spreading.

Also, I think Terrance suffered from a brain tumour which eventually killed him - I wonder if his migraines and experiences were influenced by that too.

And then there’s this quote from Leary, I think: “Hang up the phone once you got the message”. Psychedelics are no joke. I do advocate for them as sporadic psychological aide because they truly do loosen up the rigid structures in your mind and allow for a lasting change and improvement. But each session should be treated with utmost respect. There should be an understanding that each has the potential to be the best or the worst experience of your life.

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

#88

Post by sid_talks »

burnto wrote: post #81

> A further factor was cannabis. Attempts to quit left him feeling stranded in a “horribly profane” world, with a “tremendous narrowing of consciousness.” Substances that once served exploration soon functioned as psychological maintenance. “He just needed to be high on cannabis,” Harrison said. “That was his medicine… what drove everything,” keeping him from “bouncing off the ceiling.” Clearly there were a number of…

> Cannabis dependency really can sneak up on people, and for some it’s quite difficult to get off it, with real physical and emotional symptoms.

Throughout my university years, many of my peers smoked cannabis on a daily basis, often several times a day. Most of them seemed oblivious to the fact that they might have developed a dependence; whenever anyone tried to talk to them about it, they dismissed it, claiming cannabis is completely benign and nothing to worry about. Today, I personally know that at least a couple of them developed serious mental and physical problems, and to this day, they are unable to cope with life without being high.

There should be more awareness about safe cannabis use and its risks rather than framing it as a "healthier" alternative to other drugs, with people usually saying "at least I am not doing X, I am just smoking weed".

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

#89

Post by psd1 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #22
stringfood wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that looking for God is spiritual but saying you've already found Him, know Him, know His kids, etc - that is religious

There are finders and seekers. I’m always impressed with people who ardently believe they know the truth, they can act without doubt, an interesting skill.

I'm also impressed, but not in a good way. I consider certainty to be the biggest tell of falsehood, and I wish to deny the vote to people with certainty.

Certainty of opinion on a complex topic reveals a belief that organic brains can, in practice, judge the correctness of their own reasoning - a conceit that borders on the psychotic, and at minimum a complete failure of self-awareness. These people don't need agency, they need thorazine.

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

#90

Post by psd1 »

t-3 wrote: post #86
tokioyoyo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how they mean "the search for the unknown" in itself is already some sort of spirituality.

It doesn't have to be. Searching out the unknown is seeking out new knowledge, seeking to diminish ignorance. You don't need to believe in higher powers or anything like that to search for new knowledge. Spirituality is a shortcut to a unverifiable, unfalsifiable knowledge that some explanation for phenomena exists, but not at all the kind of thing anyone actually interested in truth or expanding their own knowledge…

I agree that "metaphysical" and "unverifiable" are traits of spirituality, as i understand the word. I consider theorem and animism to be categories of spirituality, but not the totality of it.

I describe myself as a humanist, and to me that approximately means a spiritual existentialist with no belief in spirits. From existentialism you can, of course, reach nihilism, a philosophy that is not so much wrong as unhelpful. But existentialism doesn't teach that there is no meaning; it teaches us that meaning is whatever we want, and it's important because we say it is important. From there you can end up back in any school of philosophy you want, but with a grounding that's compatible with living on a ball of rock hurtling through space.

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