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.
This kind of talk is how you get tech Bros paying 10 grand for some rando to be a "shaman" during a "retreat"
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.
Set is your mental mindset. Setting is where you're tripping. If you're mentally in a good place, and you're comfortable in your surroundings, you will probably have a good trip.
If you're dealing with some shit mentally and you're not comfortable where you're tripping you'll probably have a really bad trip.
It does sound like the opposite a bit, it sounds like attempting to create a spiritual practice, or assign spiritual significance at all was what did him in
All you really need is to understand that there's no magic involved here. If you deliberately compromise your brain function, you're going to have strange experiences. It doesn't "mean" anything except that you compromised your brain function.
I always imagine the recklessness of psychonauts like McKenna as something like dragging a high powered electromagnet across the skull to force altered states while doing who knows what to the membrane.
On the contrary we've seen a surge of novelty since.
Smartphone took off before 2012, a few years after iphone's release around 2010 when social media converged on it
He picked the date because of the Mayan calendar. Bullshit all the way down.
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.
But psychedelic drugs can trigger an openness to new ideas that is incredibly difficult to achieve while sober.
They’re also dangerous though, like the article notes. It’s like working (or playing) with fire. Even people who have decades of experience with it can suddenly get viciously burned. So I don’t really recommend it at all — intensive meditation can still be dangerous for people who are unprepared for what can come up but it’s a much more sustainable practice than drugs and can achieve similar (but better, if done correctly) states.
The article did make me pretty sad for the same reasons you called out. I used to look up to him a LOT in college. I moved past it when I discovered meditation but reading this piece really shut down the goodwill I still had for him. It also makes it hard not to view him as a weak person who never did any real personal development and just got lucky with his first few decades of tripping. I had nightmarish nihilistic mushroom trips that made me want to off myself even as a college student lol.
My friends from that night did still continue doing lsd after that. For one of them he stopped when he had what sounds like a horrible trip where a pool table opened up to a portal to hell and dragged him in. Lol.
Don't do drugs kids.
Now I can't go anywhere without hearing about Roko's Basilisk.
Do you have ko-fi link?
What you shouldn't do is just willy nilly tell people to take things. If the article is right about that, it's disappointing. I always saw him as being very academic and quite in tune with the dangers of outright recommendation (perhaps in contrast to Leary but I don't want to misinterpret Leary)
What do you call yourself? A militant woo-merchant?
Recently returned to psychedelic use to treat depression and the best takeaway I have for the experience is "swimming with God". By God I mean "the Universe as an entity" for lack of better words. Pro tip: ketamine wins out over psilocybin for treating depression.
I did try DMT once a long time ago and saw the machine elves (prior to ever hearing about them) but it felt more like "ROM artifacts" rather than alien consciousness trying to connect.
Your comment conflates depression with "being sad/hurt". There's biological aspects that no amount of trauma processing (whether talk therapy or spiritual (psilocybin)). Sometimes the machine itself is broken, not the programming.
I've experience significant trauma in my life and, while it shapes my being, is not the basis for my "depression".
Bandaids are valuable tools. I know there are plenty of non-chemical remedies, exercise being a foundational one, that a proper treatment plan includes.
So for everyone, YMMV, but clinical ketamine use has been borderline magical in readily perceptible improvements, with the caveat that it does seem to be temporary. This is a pity, because it's easy to grow mushrooms and DIY in that regard but getting K requires going through expensive gatekeeping.
And to address the addictive concerns of K, for me, the treatments have had their own elements of joy but I see no recreational value for me personally. I've delt with addictive issues in the past and I have no problems facing those particular demons.
This perspective can help you process those issues, absolutely. But they will not solve anything. I was always interested in finding a psychiatrist or therapist that would help me process during a shroom trip, but never found one.
And resetting your brain is just a nice way of saying, confront every single demon you have all at once. Some people are strong enough, mentally, to process things like that. Most are not. Most will take the bad trip as a sign that they shouldn't ever do psychedelics.
I'm firmly in the camp of not using them to explore my problems. I know what they are already, and I know how to fix them. I used to love psychedelics when I was younger (and had less stress and obligations). Now they just panic me and aren't fun.
And tripping to a fever dream... You know, sometimes it's best to just not respond if you know nothing about a subject at all.
I added a ko-fi link to my about page, thanks!
Now, can you share what an OBE feels like?
fraywing•12h ago