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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)

#11

Post by hankbond »

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…

> one of the points of doing psychedelics is to recapture your own imagination

this also is my takeaway as to the primary utility. its so easy to accumulate ideas about how things _must_ be represented over time. every so often (maybe 5-10 years?) its probably good to have a way to shave them off and re-expose the surface.

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

#13

Post by pfannkuchen »

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 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 aren’t literally real is an ongoing experiment.

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

#14

Post by Loughla »

cj17382 wrote: post #4

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

Spiritual doesn't mean religious, is my opinion.

It means being grounded in something firm, whether that's inner strength or a reliance on an external deity.

Religion is not required for psychedelics, but a strong grounding in something is, in my opinion.

People have bad trips because there's something inside them that they haven't identified or dealt with properly. Anxiety and/or depression will ALWAYS flare up during your trip. It's best to deal with those properly (meaning change things in your life, not just medication) beforehand.

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

#15

Post by Loughla »

tekla wrote: post #12
cj17382 wrote: post #4

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

What? No you don't. This kind of talk is how you get tech Bros paying 10 grand for some rando to be a "shaman" during a "retreat"

We used to call them trip sitters and it was a friend who helped keep you grounded. Rich people will always find a way to buy their way into a subculture.

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

#16

Post by xvxvx »

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 when I was sick as a child, running high temperatures. Why anyone would choose to experience that is another question.

Reading that McKenna was just another for-profit bullshit artist at the end of the day is the sad part. Exploring ideas and possibilities is a noble pursuit, but only if you can admit to mistakes and failures. Deciding to carry on to make money is weak and undermines everything. His legacy could have been as someone who dedicated his life to understanding psychedelics and gave an honest, well-researched evaluation at the end of it all. Money and celebrity status ruined all of that.

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

#17

Post by carljungslabtek »

feoren wrote: post #7
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.

I really don’t think the word spiritual precludes atheists, you could even read it as “the human spirit”. The point is just that you need some framework to ground yourself. Plenty of people have “spiritual” beliefs based purely around the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics or even simulation theory.

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

#18

Post by cindyllm »

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…

[dead]

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

#19

Post by carljungslabtek »

zuzululu wrote: post #6

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

he didn’t say it would diminish, he said it would increase until we reached a singularity, which he pegged to 2012. not that i’m a mckenna devotee but i always thought it was interesting that he speculated the final push would be a “device that a small group of people use to generate infinite novelty” and then the smartphone really took off exactly around 2012. the “small group” is just you and your buddies making endless memes and new inside jokes.

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

#20

Post by vanillax »

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.
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