Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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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.
The hallucination you feel on Acid/LSD can, for some people, feel like a transcendent or spiritual experience. There is a reason psychedelics and all psychoactive substances have a long religious history.
But it is, sadly, all bullshit - at least in one way. You’re not getting an experience of the true, transcendent nature of the universe, whatever that is, you’re not stepping outside yourself, your brain is just generating a slightly different story, the input sequence to your neural network is subject to a new modifier, a dialed-up parameter, whatever you want to call it. That might be meaningful, it might even afford you some kind of genuine self-reflection (it has not in my experience) that could be of use to you, but is it ‘real’? That depends on how you see it.
I think for a lot of people regular psychoactive substance use, where it changes their life “for the better” (something usually asserted only by them) and is not done directly for eg. pain relief, acts as a placebo that allows them to undergo the work of personal transformation without the self-consciousness that doing so sober can involve. They give themselves permission to grow.
The other stuff is chemical. You can take MDMA with a new girlfriend or boyfriend, talk for 6 hours and feel like you’ve been in deep love with them for years, but again, how real could that ever be?
It's interesting calling it a placebo. To my mind it's less a placebo, and more proof that personal transformation can happen, and is directly experiencable/achievable. In this day and age of 'nobody ever changes' that can be invaluable.
How real is 'deep love for years'? We have such a poor understanding of love, our culture barely even discusses it outside of a purely facile sense. The ancients believed that in the right circumstances you could fall in love with someone on the spot - but only a certain type of love.
The notion of love is far more complicated and multifaceted than we give it credit for. Is the type of love engendered by MDMA the exact same as the type of love between an old married couple? Probably not.
That being said, is it still a valid and meaningful type of love? Absolutely.
More importantly - can it lead to a deeper love for the other person, or even yourself? It's hard to say but results seem promising.
Even if you think it's all bullshit, is there not some deep value in experiencing these powerful and beautiful states? What if someone has never felt it before, don't they deserve it?
I did mdma with my girlfriend early on in our relationship and it was pretty great. It’s too easy to spend years with someone falling into a routine and putting a lid on risky and vulnerable topics. Sometimes drugs are an actually very effective way to connect deeply with someone.
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