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The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

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Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#171

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I agree. I got the message, and hung up the phone. My friend is also have difficulty leaving the path. A couple of months ago my buddy & I got some urgent texts from him-- he had taken a really large dose of LSD and ended up spending the next 12 hours in a emergency room's psych ward. I think that part of the reason that we have this B.S. propaganda around psychedelics (i.e. "They're the key to enlightenment!") is th…

> it can be pretty hard to encourage people to try drugs I think that in our society we have a problem with people taking too many drugs already. Deadly smoking of tobacco is decreasing but still too common (killed my mom). Booze and coffee are things people tolerate but use to adjust their mood. Pot seems to finally becoming accepted by law abiding society. But do we need to encourage more than this? As a parent of…

I think you should read (or listen to) Sam Harris talk about psychedelics. (I really enjoy him, but my dad thinks that he's boring as shit. Either way, you can be reassured that he's not someone who jumps to conclusions-- he's a methodical person.) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/drugs-and-the-meaning...

The key paragraphs are:

> I have two daughters who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that they choose their drugs wisely, but a life lived entirely without drugs is neither foreseeable nor, I think, desirable. I hope they someday enjoy a morning cup of tea or coffee as much as I do. If they drink alcohol as adults, as they probably will, I will encourage them to do it safely. If they choose to smoke marijuana, I will urge moderation.[2] Tobacco should be shunned, and I will do everything within the bounds of decent parenting to steer them away from it. Needless to say, if I knew that either of my daughters would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if they don’t try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in their adult lives, I will wonder whether they had missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.

> This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers. Undoubtedly, some people cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug. It has been many years since I took psychedelics myself, and my abstinence is born of a healthy respect for the risks involved. However, there was a period in my early twenties when I found psilocybin and LSD to be indispensable tools, and some of the most important hours of my life were spent under their influence. Without them, I might never have discovered that there was an inner landscape of mind worth exploring.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#172
post #163

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Well, if real wisdom requires experience then the harm you are talking about is probably slightly less harmful than the pseudo-wisdom one feels when reading another persons experience in a book. After all reading a book doesn't give us an experience, its all "just" chemistry too..

> After all reading a book doesn't give us an experience, its all "just" chemistry too.. I'd disagree there. It's less experience than actually doing something, but more than just getting a chemical flow across the brain. Reading is a weak sort of experience, no?

I was being toungue and cheek. Of course reading a book is an experience, as is taking drugs. And its not just chemical , you might go to the park and have an adventure between two blades of grass or something. Its not like people just drop a tab, close their eyes and lie in bed. I would say in order of strength of experience I would say something like: [Big Adventure without drugs] > [Small adventure with drugs] > [Reading] > [Dreaming]

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#173
post #170
post #140

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Once upon a time I took everything under the sun. I don't judge people for doing the same. But if you're claiming to "guide" people through a trip with potential for physical harm (and in an inustrialized, urban environment, that's pretty much all of them), you're goddamn right I'll judge you if you fuck someone up. If a hospital pulled this shit and didn't even try to mitigate potential harm, they'd be shut down. Wo…

You make some good points. However, I'm not speaking about whether someone's action is worthy or unworthy, but rather, the specific reaction of judgement itself as a form of conscious energy. When examined energetically, the intention of judging itself is often a form of social aggression, usually in reaction to aversion. Aversion is a natural instinct when we come across something that is toxic, or more precisely, p…

It seems like at least some of the groups you've sat down with had these things nailed down. At some point there are objective hazards in life, and I'm comfortable knowing that we can't possibly control them all. I've done some pretty irresponsible things to my brain (18-hour trips on alpha-methyltryptamine, that sort of thing) but in the end I am the one who pays (or will pay) the price for that.

Honest-to-god shamans that are the recipients of generations' worth of accumulated cultural traditions aren't my concern; I'm hardly fit to judge them. But that doesn't seem to be what's going on in some of these ceremonies. It's irresponsible (and kind of shitty) to act as a guide unless the guide is prepared to handle extremal behavior.

As far as judging others for taking hallucinogens, nah. People's brains react differently to different agents at different points in time, and that's something that you either learn to deal with or you stop taking hallucinogens.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#174

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Wow! That must be an insane profession. I have a few questions for you: Firstly, how do you deal with the legal aspect of things? (If you can answer that, if not, I understand) Secondly, why take the potion instead of pure DMT? If that is the active ingredient (along with an MAOI), I'd imagine just taking the pure compound to be more efficacious. (And the trips last only 20 minutes or something- under an hour) Thirdl…

It's not as crazy as you might imagine - at least, compared to the lifestyles my clients lead. I (unfortunately) do not live in a geodesic yurt in some Catskill mountain grove, but in a modest rear house apartment in a town with generally nothing going on. The ceremonies are all hosted at friends or acquaintances houses who rent it to me. The legality of it is something I am not worried about. The reagents to make DM…

I have heard second hand that this site works great http://pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion (please use Tor browser to access)
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