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Now, can you share what an OBE feels like?
Do you have ko-fi link?
Clearly there were a number of factors contributing to his difficulties, but this sounds like it may be an underestimated one, maybe more than the mushrooms even. Cannabis dependency really can sneak up on people, and for some it’s quite difficult to get off it, with real physical and emotional symptoms.
Throughout my university years, many of my peers smoked cannabis on a daily basis, often several times a day. Most of them seemed oblivious to the fact that they might have developed a dependence; whenever anyone tried to talk to them about it, they dismissed it, claiming cannabis is completely benign and nothing to worry about. Today, I personally know that at least a couple of them developed serious mental and physical problems, and to this day, they are unable to cope with life without being high.
There should be more awareness about safe cannabis use and its risks rather than framing it as a "healthier" alternative to other drugs, with people usually saying "at least I am not doing X, I am just smoking weed".
I did this once and ended up completely languageless for a moment, like unable to write and speak at all. Then I would have very intense visions so I would try to close my eyes but alas! my eyes have been closed this whole time. Then there were black holes eating up my field on vision, like clusters of dead pixels on a computer screen, spreading.
Also, I think Terrance suffered from a brain tumour which eventually killed him - I wonder if his migraines and experiences were influenced by that too.
And then there’s this quote from Leary, I think: “Hang up the phone once you got the message”. Psychedelics are no joke. I do advocate for them as sporadic psychological aide because they truly do loosen up the rigid structures in your mind and allow for a lasting change and improvement. But each session should be treated with utmost respect. There should be an understanding that each has the potential to be the best or the worst experience of your life.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
This kind of talk is how you get tech Bros paying 10 grand for some rando to be a "shaman" during a "retreat"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just my general observation having never read anything from him: many people with generally good qualities but also with a bit of narcissism and self-importance have, when exposed to psychedelics, gone off the rails and became truth-owning preachers or outright abusers. This is to me interesting in so far as this is not the case generally for others groups of psychedelic users.
In that aspect I can understand the analogy, although I have no idea if it's correct.
Guy goes through traumatic experiences because he abused the hell out of psychedelics (5g weekly, wtf?) but continues to encourage people to do the same because he doesn't want to be seen as weak
I have so many problems with McKenna. Guy was a drug addict but because he was one of the first to write about drugs during an era of taboo, he gets a pioneers deference. That would be fine if people still didn't glorify his absurd doses and bull shit about "knowledge downloads" or whatever it is.
Anyways, pardon my rant
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)
He picked the date because of the Mayan calendar. Bullshit all the way down.
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
Now I can't go anywhere without hearing about Roko's Basilisk.
good thing, too!