God Is In The Magic Mushrooms

M. Scott Peck defines mental health as "dedication to reality at all costs." Assuming the validity of the definition, I wonder how the ingestion of any mind-altering substance can ever be consistent with "mental health."
(Perhaps the question should be qualified to exclude those suffering from mental illnesses characterized by distorted perceptions of reality, ie., schizophrenia, where the administration of medications is intended to reduce such distortions.)

(Please excuse me while I have another drink and ponder this topic some more.) :)

Eric
 
Vivi said:
Munk, you touch on an important thing. There is a clear distinction between drug users I know. Many, whom I tend to not associate with, focus their entire life around getting a buzz and will be someone's bitch for the evening if it means smoking a bowl.

Others I know like these things, but are content without them. They enjoy life just fine sober. When they take the drugs, that is not an end unto itself, it's merely an alteration of their world which gives them a different perspective on what they enjoy. These are the types that take drugs while doing things they love, not taking drugs for the love of doing them. Smoking some salvia and walking around in a forst at night, or smoking some grass and having a jam session with their pals.

the doorway point is a good one too. The effects of most of these drugs can be replicated with the human body itself. Most people don't want to spend the time and energy acheiving this, and take the easy route of ingesting substances. Marijuana has never gotten me as high as I've gotten myself.
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Good post.

I think think some people view life as something to be escaped and some view it as something to be experienced.

I totally think that things of the psychedelic nature can expose rationalizations and other self deceptions that we play on ourselves by stripping away our defense mechanisims. However some people are not ready to have their ego laid bare and will actually drink more to cover up that sense of loss of control that these things give.

Like Jurassic said ingestion of stuff like that is more ritualized in the cultures they came from. We can create our own rituals, and they will work, but in doing so we must guard against just rationalizing our excessive and addictive behaviors.

A lot of our problems with eating, drinking, wars and drugs has to do with the naturally wasteful, gluttenous and self centered tendencies that our market driven society encourages.

You go up to the mountain and have your vision, but then one comes down from the mountain with his insights and tries to incorporate them into their daily life. If you stay on the mountain you freeze or starve or are just plain selfish.

There's a really great book I have pimped here before. "After Esctacy the Laundry" by Jack Kornfield. It deals with moments of extreme highness and one ness with God, both chemically and naturally induced and basically argues that the hard part of the spiritual quest is not in reaching these states, although they are important, but in what we do with them when we come down from the Mt. Kind of like the Monk who spent 30 years in the cave experiencing God and then came down and somebody bumped him in the street and he took a swing at them;) All the oneness is just so much Wonder Bread if it doesn't allow us to understand ourselves and our fellow man better

While something that breaks you out of your normal mindset is important, the real importance is do these experiences make you a better person? How do you integrate them into our daily practice, and come out more compassionate and helpful to humanity in general? I feel as a society we have got how to get to these states down, but a lot of people have not used them to truly gain insight that they could.
 
Marijuana and psilocybe mushrooms are plants, not "drugs."

Marijuana is relatively harmless. Mushrooms have messed a lot of people up pretty bad for 4-12 hours (anxiety attacks, asthma, nausea, wandering off into the wilderness or the city unsupervised while in a state of acute psychosis, etc.). Most people who take them recreationally only do it a couple of times a year -- many never repeat their first experience. A guide is necessary if you've never done it before. Many first timers who do this by themselves wind up in the ER, jail, or the psych ward. I don't think it should be classified the same as crack or meth, but it shouldn't be freely available to any high school kid that wants it either.

Unlike LSD, the effects of psilocybe mushrooms (as opposed to lab produced "psilocybin" which is often something else) are generally controllable, predictable, and temporary. LSD is just a street name given to any neurotoxin dripped on a blotter that will make you "trip" -- the original formula is nearly impossible to reproduce (precursors on Schedule I and difficult to create in a lab by the average chem student), so everyone has their own secret formula. Some of the "better" stuff is similar to the original formula, but questionable analogs are substituted for the main ingredient. Most of the stuff on the street is either insecticide, PCP, or weird and horrible hallucinogens like STP -- all will make you feel weird and see stuff (as will eating a number of poisonous plants, or mixing certain prescription medications), so people pay $5 a dose and come back for more. Mind you, even with the original Owsley version of LSD-25, if you ODed (easy to do, as tolerances vary, and LSD's doses are measured in micrograms, so a single "hit" might contain anywhere between 0 and 20 doses if the sheet of blotter is improperly prepared) you would be in serious distress -- the common treatment was isolation and Thorazine. Some people, wanting to "see God" or something, went and deliberately ate between 10 and 25 doses in one sitting (people who trip a lot build up a tolerance), and never came back (read as: locked in an institution, or watching cartoons and eating oatmeal in their parent's basement). I've dealt with enough acidheads to know that this stuff causes permanent changes to brain chemistry -- street LSD is in the same catagory as meth, in my opinion (meth will make you see stuff too, once the eventual paranoid schizophrenia kicks in, and also causes permanent changes).

Street drugs are poison, and those who deal should be removed from society.

Psilocybe fungi are dangerous, but should be permitted for mature adults for use in moderation -- generally for "religious" purposes, much as peyote is used.

Marijuana is everywhere, and actually can be beneficial to persons with certain medical issues -- plus the seed pulp and hemp fiber can be beneficial to various industries. It isn't good for teenagers to smoke it, but it shouldn't be classified as more dangerous than cocaine or heroin by the DEA, and we shouldn't be wasting billions of dollars every year trying to eradicate a weed that grows in the wild. As most intelligent folks are aware, commercial tobacco products are more dangerous (addiction, heath issues, accidental fires, etc.).
 
So funny! :D & so true. Its also so easy to replace one addiction with another & think weve moved on.

Spiral
 
tyr_shadowblade said:
Marijuana and psilocybe mushrooms are plants, not "drugs."
,Street drugs are poison, and those who deal should be removed from society.

).
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son, I hope this doesn't come as a blinding revelation, but a drug is anything the law says it is, rationalizing won't help, and the assholes in government (me) will be happy to give you plenty of time to think about that without interuption. :D :D :D
 
hollowdweller said:
Glad you totally caught my point:thumbup: :D
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:thumbup: Been there, seen that, done that, {evry day from waking to sleep for 16 years.} now my main addiction is aquiring the best kukri collection in the world.. ;) :D

Spiral
 
Vivi said:
The only thing concerning me with drug laws is that I could face certain consequences due to them, they don't make my moral choices for me and in fact I think many laws are outright wrong. Indecent exposure for example, but that's another thread.
. :)
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Go ahead son, light up that reefer next to a school yard, wave your nevermind in the direction of all those little kids, and see if the judge agrees that you're setting a good example. Law enforcement officers don't legislate; the job is to bring you into the judge's presence and let the system work. If you don't like the law, convince 51% of the people to agree with you, and repeal the law. I would lose no sleep at all if they legalized pot tomorrow....I disagree with it's use, I would hate to see it become a legal stepping stone, but in my country the people rule. Right now, most want drug laws, but ten,twenty years from now...Who knows? I retired eleven years ago from DEA....eight in my class of 42 made it to retirement, and I have paid my dues. I speak from a wealth of experience where desperados did unspeakable things to their fellow man. Was it worth it? I wouldn't change my life, especially the last ten years as a high school teacher. Hope when you get to be my age, you can say the same. Read Romans, Chap. 13, from one of the modern, easy to understand translations. What do you think?
 
There is in Romans, several passages which deal with people who have turned away from enlightenment, and engage in various far reaching practises. What they do to their minds and thoughts is particularly interesting.

It remains one of my favorite sections of the Bible. Once upon a time, the words hit me in the head like a mallet.


>>>>>>>>>
Many drugs come from plants. Thus saying such and such is 'a plant' is not useful for this conversation.



munk
 
Not neccesarily; many flowers will kill you.

Tylenol is potentially fatal when taken in large amounts. A lot of people swallow a bottle in a suicide attempt, change their minds, get their stomachs pumped too late, and die several days later of liver failure.



munk
 
I support, and will continue to support, the right for people to put whatever they want in their bodies, for whatever reason. It's their responsibility to understand the consequences. If they're not adults, it's the responsibility of their parents or legal guardians to regulate this. It is not the responsibility of the government.

I've heard some good arguments against "manufactured" drugs in the past and I'm willing to bend on that point; meth and the stronger narcotics and opiates, in particular, are very dangerous even for strong willed individuals. But stuff that grows out of the ground? How do you regulate plants successfully? (You can't, and we don't; besides the usual "War on Drugs" insanity, take a look on the DEA's position on opium poppies.) Foolishness.

If someone wants to eat a mushroom and talk to the gods, let them. There wasn't actually a problem here until someone decided to regulate mushroom use and create one.
 
I think certain drugs have a much higher abuse potential than others.

For instance cocaine is one of the worst. In the plant form maybe it's not much more than coffee, but cocaine has the bad effect of making you feel like you are totally clear headed but at the same time really impairing your judgement worse than alcohol IMO.

PCP was a very bad drug and really has seemed to fall out of favor.

Quaaludes were a really bad drug from the aspect of people wrecking cars and hurting themselves. Probably better they are gone.

I think for some people pot is a bad thing but in general most that I know that abuse pot also smoke cigs and drink fairly compulsively too. I think it really has a fairly low abuse potential for most people.

Alcohol is one of the worst, really as bad as quaaludes and it's legal:rolleyes:

The bad thing about Crystal meth is the labs blowing up. I don't understand the fascination with it these days. I did it some 20 years ago and while it would keep you UP if you were studying in general it just made me nervous and edgy if I wasn't tired. I never could figure out the appeal.

The big abuse I see these days in my work is painkillers and benzodiazapenes. Most druggies might smoke some pot and drink but seems like pills are so easy to get, esp if you have a medicaid card, that they are the big drugs of abuse now.
 
HD? The meth labs occasionally exploding is bad enough, but this stuff really screws people up over time. We have a lot of meth monsters in the stir over here and they're easy to spot. (Besides the missing teeth.) It makes them nuts. Even when they clean up, they're still nuts. While they're on it, they do some really...er...odd things. I won't go into details. It's nuts.

I've never tried it and don't intend to. I have enough problems managing the legal stuff. ;)

EDIT: I dated a girl not too long ago that had an on-again/off-again meth habit. (It eventually became on-again full time and we parted ways, but I digress.) The way that she explained it, it becomes a euphoric with regular use and has some other desirable effects as well. I've seen what it does over time and I'm not interested, but everyone must make their own choices.

She made hers. I did what I could and it wasn't enough. What she has is not what I want but I hope that it makes her happy. Evidently it makes her happier than I did.

I mentioned meth as one of the ugly ones because it is, indeed, an ugly one. I've never encountered a meth tree during my travels and I've never met a meth user that started their habit at gunpoint, so I stand by my original opinion.
 
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