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Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

evanreas.postagon.com

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Re: Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

#91
post #53
post #29

As a young 20-ish who've never partaken in any kind of drugs. Does anyone have a NEGATIVE story to share? Not the type of "he got addicted and ruined his life" but "hallucinations after all are just hallucinations, and the profound effects are fake etc."

You can read a lot of different stories about it on Erowid. Anyway a lot of people treat mushrooms as a party drug, so I assume those people don't consider themselves to have had profound visions. There does seem to be a subculture of people who take the visions way too seriously. They believe it's giving knowledge of an external reality. I think it's a little bit like a reset button - your beliefs and thinking patte…

I do not consider mushrooms to be a party drug. neither do I consider weed to be a party drug, but that's just me. historically, I have been addicted to smoking for quite some time... but, you know, there's an interesting thing that happened after I started to take mushrooms.

in comparison to smoking a joint, I would previously smoke before programming, and what would sometimes happen is I would end up smoking another, and another, and another; chasing that dragon until I felt inspired. however, if you were to do a few g's of shrooms instead, the last thing you're gonna be thinking is, "wow I'm gonna drop another few g's" like you'd be thinking after smoking a joint ... I'm usually so overloaded by the mind expanding experience I just had, that's the last thing I wanna do. I won't do them more often that once a week, and I'm a highly addictive personality. actually, I've noticed that I tend to not want to drink alcohol, or ... well really anything addicting, and watched all addictive behavior reduce every time. I just want to create. I now neither need mushrooms anymore. the changes seem to be permanently enlightening.

I've not tried LSD (cause I can't get it here), but I know that Jobs was a huge proponent of it. from what I can gather, the concept is similar.

I think, if you are somewhat grounded individual, I believe your experience will be something of exaggerated connection with nature, other humans, and your own creative ideas. perhaps it's a bit illusory, but I have never seen a detrimental side-effect to redefining your connection with your immediate world with that sort of illusory connection.

you cannot overdose on mushrooms. I also found I am less inclined to simplistic forms of thoughtless hedonism, focusing a bit more on the bigger picture. I find that creativity and novelty are forefront in my mind for at least a few days afterwards, if not permanently.

compare that with alcohol, and I think you may rethink your next few mindless sloshers.

@neilk, I believe that the negative-positive experiences are actually the best. IMO, it's just soo easy to smoke a doobie or go get smashed -- yet reality tends to come back with a vengeance afterward. however, if you're forced to look at something like that, and you can get past it, my best experiences have usually come about with that feeling of freedom after leaving behind a retarded mindset.

Re: Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

#92
post #50

Before people run out and do this, anyone know of any negative side effects? I'm a bit prone to anxiety and my only experience with a drug everyone said was harmless (prescription pot) was terrifying.

In a subset of people pot induces paranoia, negative feelings, and anxiety rather than the usual good stuff. As a member of this subset, and I don't touch the stuff. My experiences with mushrooms (and a host of other drugs) have, however, been largely positive. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Same here. Even the tiniest of hits puts me in panic attack mode, but other things sit wonderfully with me. The last time I smoked, years ago, I was that guy and totally had to be knocked out with tranquilizers. Very bad experience, but so it goes.

Re: Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

#93
post #11

This sounds like the author took a low to moderate dose of mushrooms. It's possible to have much more profound experiences (both positive and negative) than what was described in this article. I can recommend a book called "The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience" for a more comprehensive look at some of the possibilities. Also, see the trip reports on erowid.org. Psychedelics may be best for people who are naturally…

Larry Hagman has a good story about how LSD changed his life when he was 35 and helped him get off booze/cigarettes. His therapist recommended it too http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v13n1/13125hag.html

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Ps...

Re: Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

#96
post #29

As a young 20-ish who've never partaken in any kind of drugs. Does anyone have a NEGATIVE story to share? Not the type of "he got addicted and ruined his life" but "hallucinations after all are just hallucinations, and the profound effects are fake etc."

There are most definitely "bad trips" which can be deeply frightening, scarring experiences. The worst effects though seem to come to those who become somewhat psychologically addicted to the thrill of the experience, and take repeated doses every few days or weeks over a period of years.

The closest analogy I can make is to PTSD; they have trouble dealing with the banality and slow pace of normal life, and seem somehow "burnt out" (cliche, but a very apt term for someone who took one trip too many.)

Re: Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

#97
post #66
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devil's advocate here, I can claim that our ordinary state of consciousness is the most legitimate one (the one that is closest to reality, if there is such thing as objective reality), or at the very least the most useful one - otherwise we would have evolved for the different state of consciousness. The burden of proof would be on you to justify that the altered state of consciousness is indeed more in…

"I can claim that our ordinary state of consciousness is the most legitimate one (the one that is closest to reality, if there is such thing as objective reality), or at the very least the most useful one - otherwise we would have evolved for the different state of consciousness." Is your view that that we have evolved for the ordinary state of consciousness a view that was made and evaluated in an ordinary state of…

Re. Terrece McKenna, Interstellar spores & evolution.

This is a pretty clear indication to me that psychedelic inspired insights are merely the concatenation by the mind of unrelated concepts where the result is definitely not more than the sum of the parts.

Some simple refutations that spring easily to mind:

- mushrooms have the same type of DNA as the rest of earth's living creatures, no?

- information cannot be transmitted in a chemical compound. You can have a trip by ingesting the psychoactive compound extracted from magic mushrooms.

- no other animals were enlightened or had their evolution enhanced, why only us?

While it is attractive and intriguing to believe that hallucinogens open the doors to perception and reveal a larger reality, I believe that it is much more likely that the modeling/simulating machine that is your brain is conjuring that impression in a way that is, by definition, seamlessly undetectable and wholly convincing to that same brain.

Re: Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

#98
PLAYBOY: Ever take LSD? GATES: My errant youth ended a long time ago. PLAYBOY: What does that mean? GATES: That means there were things I did under the age of 25 that I ended up not doing subsequently. PLAYBOY: One LSD story involved you staring at a table and thinking the corner was going to plunge into your eye. GATES: [Smiles] PLAYBOY: Ah, a glimmer of recognition. GATES: That was on the other side of that boundary. The young mind can deal with certain kinds of gooping around that I don't think at this age I could. I don't think you're as capable of handling lack of sleep or whatever challenges you throw at your body as you get older. However, I never missed a day of work.

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LSD was a big deal for Steve Jobs. How big? Evidently, Jobs believed that experimenting with LSD in the 1960s was "one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life." What's more, he felt that there were parts of him that the people he knew and worked with could not understand, simply because they hadn't had a go at psychedelics.

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When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool -- LSD-25.

"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead -- who were among the many artists inspired by LSD.

"When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of technologists at Cisco Systems.

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