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I've lived an entirely straightlaced life and have zero interest even in marijuana. I'm not interested in drugs per se. What I am interested in is the apparently mind-opening power of psychedelics. Aldous Huxley's essay "The Doors to Perception" has once again made me curious. For those of you who have experimented with mescaline or whatever else, have these experiences changed you deeply and permanently? Would even taking small amounts grant you clarity or creativity without some terrible drawbacks?
I think of Carl Jung's advice, to "beware of unearned wisdom," and I think that expresses a healthy conservatism about these things. But then again, millions of people have used caffeine and nicotine both recreationally or for work. People now use marijuana for medicine. So why not use psychedelics for whatever positive effects they bring? I also think of people having bad trips or frying their brains. My mother grew up in the 70s and recalls a few people who made themselves permanently insane through some wacky experiments or other. I think ultimately it's better to leave well enough alone, but I'd like to hear different views.
As someone who has taken his share of heroic doses, as well as microdosed for years on end, I have mixed feelings about the whole experience. I went into the experience of psychedelic use as an atheist, and came out having a suspicion that there may be a karmic cycle of birth and rebirth; also that there may be a transcendent cosmic consciousness from which we all come and all return to. There is a horror in having this suspicion that I may be reborn again, that all of my attachments to my family, friends and self will be ripped from my consciousness and I will be left alone, with nothing before going through the whole cycle again. There is also a horror in suspecting that since the cosmic consciousness that we all may stem from is indistinguishable from ourselves that I may eventually experience all the suffering in the universe. There were times while using when I had an awareness of the Earth as an organic entity and felt a sense of terror at all the suffering and destruction that occurred within this entity. The shift in perspective that I experienced when having used also made me more aware of the transience of all things and sorrowful in their passing. Psychedelics can amplify horrors that you scarcely knew to exist and then you cannot un-forget them.
All that being said, they have improved my life considerably. They (paired with therapy) helped me overcome substance abuse. They helped me overcome self-alienation and self-hatred and develop self-compassion. But the experience isn't without its downsides, and shouldn't be entered into lightly.
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EDIT: One more thing, I know that the Myers-Briggs is just astrology for boys, but before the whole psychedelics/therapy thing I was invariably an INTP, and the years since I always test as an INFP.
Agreed. To me the entire Buddhist/Hindu cosmology is profoundly horrific when you get right down to the roots. Most people who subscribe to these beliefs seem to not consider them too deeply, at least in the West.
When you really consider what 'no attachments' means - you're looking at dropping all the love for your friends, family, etc. Not caring about a single other human being.
Sure Buddhist monks give all sorts of rhetorical flourishes to deny this dark truth, but I don't buy it. At the end of the day Buddhism is a profoundly anti-social philosophy, as far as I'm concerned. It also promotes radical selfishness in it's sanitized form that many western rationalists love. Gives them license and a 'spiritual' presence while being utterly narcissistic nihilists.
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