Ch 6 The Rodeo of Mind and Spirit

This along with The Worlds chapter

Additions

This chapter as with the The Worlds one has a lot of material I couldn’t fit in the book. You’ll find that material after the additions

241211                                      More on the MMCs                                                                                                  These are becoming increasingly popular, in part because being on them is less discombobulating than from a toke or two, and yet it is such a sweet experience. Heart opening but not as pushy as MDMA. I think of it has enhancing heart intelligence.

FROM AN EXPERIENCED MMC ENTHUSIAST:

What’s the Difference Between 2-MMC and 3-MMC?

Chemically, while both 2-MMC (2-Methylmethcathinone) and 3-MMC (3-Methylmethcathinone) are very similar substituted cathinones, their chemical structures differ slightly. The 2-MMC methyl groups are attached in the second position to the nitrogen atom in the phenethylamine backbone, whereas 3-MMC has the methyl group attached to the third carbon atom of the phenethylamine backbone. While the difference seems insignificant, there appears to be a change in effects, notably a higher degree of euphoria and stimulation from 3-MMC.

Dr. Zee, the inventor of 2-MMC and 3-MMC, says, “3-MMC is a very effective therapeutic adjunct. 4-MMC is a very effective party drug, and it’s not a great therapeutic adjunct at all because it creates a great deal of anxiety during its comedown.”

2-MMC is often described as providing a smoother and more relaxed experience, making it considered as more of a “functional” high. While 3-MMC is known for its higher potency and stimulating effects that may resemble those of MDMA or amphetamines. 2-MMC is known for its stimulant and empathogenic properties, often described as providing a smoother and more relaxed experience compared to other cathinones making it more of a functional high, study drug or therapeutic adjunct. 2-MMC is known for having less difficult comedowns than its cousins, 3-MMC and 4-MMC.

Personal Subjective Experience Report                                                                                                            From 100, 125 and 150mg sessions of 2-MMC, comparing to 3-MMC.

GENERAL- Not as “pushy” as 3-MMC. – I would imagine than a 20% increase in dosage from 3-MMC would give a similar push.- Has more of a down-tempo vibe, but still a get-up-and-go effect. Great for getting things done. – I think this would offer a better group experience than the 3-MMC need for one-on-one interaction.- It doesn’t have that extra special something that 3-MMC does, which can be a plus, in that it would be easier to not be compelled to overuse it.

BODY – It feels more clear and clean.- There are no body jitters, just a soft, bright and present relaxation.- Not as speedy and less jaw-clenching.- It was more functional in terms of being able to move around and do physical activity.- Generated less excess body heat.- Important to keep the water bottle nearby.- Didn’t have the 1hr craving to re-dose.- The descent was more abrupt. There was a noticeable completion vibe at around the 2-3 hr mark. Whereas 3-MMC has a longer and more gradual denouement.- Very easy to get to sleep afterward.

RELATING – Conversational engagement was easy and relaxed.- There was a strong emphasis on the present moment which encouraged a delightful interest in the other. This would likely lend this medicine as an adjunct for various therapeutic modalities.- There was more of an opportunity for dialogue rather than a monologue. – It didn’t have the absolute agenda of *needing* to unburden shame. However, there was definitely a marked increase in the ability and desire to share withholds.- While 3-MMC is known for its capacity to bypass the “shame-circuit” 2-MMC does the same, albeit in a more subtle and less insistent way. I would say the effect of this is reduced by about 30% on 2-MMC.

DOSING – We’ve found that 125mg is a sweet spot. 100mg was too light and 150 was a bit pushy – One thing to note, there’s a noticeable drop-off at the 2 hour mark. If one wishes to go longer, then boosting with between 50 and 70mg at the 2 hour mark immediately reinstates the energy for another 2 hours. Then, there is a nice glide back to baseline for an additional 2 hours after that.240818 This is an image of brain activity on LSD compared to a control.

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  INTERESTING BRAIN SCANS ON PSYCHEDELICS

  LSD

         Psilocybin.

The following is material moved from the book. There, I explained that many of my readers will be familiar with this material, so I left things in the book that may be of more interesting to them.

Differences Between Psychedelics

   There are general differences between how these flows appear while on different substances. I feel sure that I could distinguish psilocybin from LSD from ayahuasca. However, when a person is fully into one of those states, such an idea would never occur to them because interest in such a thing would no longer be present.     The quality of light phenomena experienced in each of these is similar in intensity while subtly different. These are eidetic images. The term eidetic has several definitions. One meaning is remembering a visual scene with as much clarity as when it was present. I am using eidetic differently, seeing vibrant images that do not come from memory or anything outside. Some readers will be getting it and finding humor because, WOW, you can sure get the most unbelievably intense, complex, beautiful, colorful, intertwining cascades of energetic flows while on a psychedelic.        My psychedelic experiences certainly affected my aesthetics.
On psychedelics, there may be synesthesia, which is usually described as seeing sounds and hearing colors, but it’s more than that, as touch and feelings take on textures and color. One can become an incredibly dynamic flow of pristine, energetic light.  There’s a sweet, humorous scene in the movie A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin. It’s a documentary about the New York University and Johns Hopkins University research using strong doses of psilocybin with Stage 4 cancer patients. The goal was to see if a mystical experience could reduce their end-of-life anxiety. It did! One woman talked about seeing the most beautiful light and said,  “I didn’t just see the light. I became the light.” The FDA team reviewing this study was especially impressed by how it helped reduce depression in this cohort and how it might be applied to society.
Music is strongly synergistic in enhancing psychedelic experiences. Whole realms of light can open between the notes.     Many psychonauts have wondered, ‘WOW — did those musicians know this was in there?’ I remember times back in the day, lying on a bed tripping along to, say, the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, opening and opening and opening into vast, intense realms of light and meaning. This was being experienced in one way or another by millions of us hippies. We knew we were pioneers in exploring these incredible realms for modern civilization.                                                       The enhanced touch is fantastic. You may become extraordinarily sensitive to what feels like every cell or something and have truly novel sensations — waves and dimensions of pleasures like exotic tastes and scents morphing into ever-novel forms and sensations. Interestingly, the skin comes from the same tissue as the nervous system. The physical pleasure you can experience can morph through many unimaginable dimensions. Words fail. Stunningly beautiful, intense, and/or subtle, awe- inspiring, heart-rending and heart-healing, and/or spiritually enlightening in ways
impossible for humans in any other state. Psychedelics often produce a merging of consciousness as boundaries open. As Terence McKenna said: Whether you like psychedelics or hate them, they open boundaries. They might open your boundaries with your cat. They might open your boundaries with your washing machine if you’re not careful.                                                                                                      That got a lot of laughs. Profound feelings of love and gratitude are a typical result of such experiences. Research has found that these journeys help people feel more positive about life.
I believe it was in 1965 that psychedelic guru Timothy Leary predicted that in ten years, there would be temples around the country where people could go to be initiated in the psychedelic spiritual mysteries. He was right. They were called college campuses!                                                                                                       The classic ones are LSD, psilocybin-containing mushrooms (close to 200 species), mescaline-containing peyote, San Pedro and other cacti. Additionally, Sasha Shulgin synthesized a couple of hundred, of which 2C-B is the most popular. Check out his TIKAL and PIKAL books.                                       Can psychedelic use fairly reliably produce genuine mystical experiences and/or a radically new understanding of the nature of reality and/or personal insightful healing experiences? Yes. Are their effects simply the product of deranged hallucinatory neurochemical cascades? Maybe.

Enhanced Sensitivity and Time Dilation
These are two interesting consciousness-expanding properties of cannabis and psychedelics. These substances increase one’s sensitivity how many units of experience one has in a given amount of clock time. The more units, the subjectively longer the time. With cannabis, this can happen to a minor degree compared to moderate or more potent doses of psychedelics. It is common for people, while stoned, to experience a song lasting longer. This can be true of sensual and other experiences as well.       An issue is that increases in sensitivity to our inner selves and the world around us make good experiences more pleasant and bad experiences worse. Good and bad aren’t rigid categories, so let’s say that being stoned, relaxed, and outside in nature on a lovely day is likely to be a more pleasant experience than driving through rush hour traffic to a dentist appointment. When sensitivity to our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives is more appropriately refined, we tend to live more successful, satisfying lives.
Many people don’t like this effect of cannabis use because it makes them paranoid. One reason may be that they are using too much, or perhaps it’s bringing attention to something they don’t want to feel. I know couples who did better with cannabis and psychedelics when they realized that one of them was more sensitive to the substance, so parsing their experience on that worked better for them.                        The increase in inner sensitivity on psychedelics is unimaginable. One can find themselves in an extremely sensitive realm and then have it suddenly shift to a more refined one again and again. If you can imagine being in a realm with an energy matrix of quarter-inch units, then to eighth, then to a hundredth, then to a thousandth, you may have some sense of this.                                                                 This phenomenon can make being and functioning in the world very difficult or even impossible while on a stronger dose. My most profound journeys have occurred with me lying quietly or with music in a safe, secluded space.

Mysticism                                                                                                                                                       From the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy: “Belief in union with the divine nature by means of ecstatic contemplation, and belief in the power of spiritual access to ultimate reality, or domains of knowledge closed off to ordinary thought.” This definition only partially works about psychedelics, which require neither contemplation nor belief to produce a mystical experience.  Research with them has shown that strong experiences often produce, in my terms, a surrendering into an indescribable sense of timeless wonder and unity with God’s infinite and eternal mind as pure love. I understand that for skeptics, and skepticism is healthy so long as it doesn’t devolve into cynicism, this may sound like nonsensical gibberish. Fair enough. These experiences are truly ineffable. Nonetheless, there is a long history of these experiences in various religious traditions, and the certainty of these experiences as meaningful is nearly universal.

Personal Insight                                                                                                                                             That said, not all psychedelic journeys provide this type of experience. It is partially an issue of dosage, as strong doses are usually required. Also, even with one’s intention to have a mystical experience, there is no guarantee that it will occur even with high doses. A common refrain from facilitators is that you may not get what you want, but you will get what you need. Someone wanting a mystical experience might instead find themselves deep into confronting and, to some degree, resolving a painful childhood trauma.                                                                                                                                           In one such case, the woman involved relived the first emotional imprint of her life while in utero. It was that her mother really, really did not want her. On the mother’s behalf, she was poor, single, and already had an infant. The journeyer’s resolution after reviewing her entire life and all the ways this had affected her was to realize that all she could do now was come to love herself.       Later in the trip, as she shifted through states, she experienced great humor at the wild vicissitudes of life in the human realm.
Can these experiences provide helpful insight into the nature of reality and our own minds? One example of profound healing insight has been shown repeatedly in various settings.     Experiments on the effect of LSD on approximately 700 patients with mental health issues, including alcohol, addiction, and late-stage cancer, were begun in 1963 at the Spring Grove State     Hospital. Continuing research moved to the Maryland Psychiatric Hospital. The initial positive outcomes generated more research money. The frantic drug politics of the era led to its ending in 1976. You can look them up on Wikipedia for more details.
Humans naturally crave altered states of consciousness and have been highly creative in exploring them. Fasting, dancing, chanting, exercise, sex, and more are used for this purpose. Other animals, too. There are many stories of drunken monkeys and many other inebriated species’ behavior. This is a necessary part of a healthy life.
First of all, 100% sobriety in its most significant sense would be impossible, and if it were, it would lead to unhealthy psychological outcomes. In virtually all cultures, recreational drugs are used. Maybe humans need ways to get out of their ordinary humdrum lives. All these practices and substance use have both positive and negative properties. In our country, alcohol and tobacco use commonly shorten human life spans.                                                                                                                                                         One reason for Alcoholics Anonymous’s meager success rate is the misunderstanding of basic human nature. One of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Bill Wilson, took LSD, and his spiritual experience cured his many years of chronic depression. He thought the experience could benefit alcoholics, but that didn’t go over with other leaders.
In thinking about history, you can do a counterfactual thought experiment. Imagine how different our culture would be if AA had adopted LSD before any hippie movement and brought it into mainstream mental health treatment.                                                                                                                                           There is no way to describe powerful psychedelic experiences. There is nothing in our ordinary reality that is correlated to them. That said, I’ll try. Also, from the Sam Harris podcast  ‘The Paradox of Psychedelics’ there’s an excerpt on YouTube under ‘Sam Harris mushrooms’. He does an excellent and somewhat hilarious job of talking about his recent experience with mushrooms. The main point isn’t to get high or go on a trip.                                                                                                                                                As Stephen Gaqskin said about psychedelics, you don’t get high, and you don’t come down. You tune into the energy matrix underlying ordinary reality all the time and then reintegrate into this reality. MDMA and cannabis experiences are more amenable to description, yet words can’t reproduce the actual feeling of the experiences. These are state-dependent memories. You have to be in the state where the experiences were produced to remember them—more about these two soon. This is fun, and I’m proud of myself for this one. Here’s a relevant thought experiment:                                                            Imagine that we all lived in a world where we only saw black, white, and shades of gray in our minds and the external world. Then, one day, you ate a strange mushroom and, after some serious disorientation, found yourself having full-color scenarios in your mind and your vision of the world. OMG – the grass, the flowers, the the.. the.. sky. Your hand! All in full, vibrant color! What undeniable radiance. What glory of creation. How could this be? Such joy in this presence.
   Then, after sleeping, you awoke in the old dismal world of gray mind and gray world. You would know for certain that there’s something else. You would have no concepts, no language, in which to express what you’d experienced. You’d want to tell Everyone, especially your family and friends, that there is so much more to see and an unbelievably beautiful, magnificent experience. You’d for sure go mushroom collecting again ASAP.                                                                                                                         You and your intrepid pioneering friends. The ecstatic joy of the experience would be contagious, especially with your brighter, more adventurist friends. You might perceive some sense of an ineffable Consciousness. You might even know this is a divine sacred calling beyond anything you could imagine. That, in some mysterious manner, has been calling to you with the promise that it is reaching out to you as you are reaching out to it. You might even go further. You might let go of everything that tied you to your life. In doing that, finding that there is a ‘You’, a viewpoint has no properties other than consciousness. Consciousness of ecstatic beauty so vast beyond anything you could ever have even come remotely close to imagining. You find the ultimate ground of being in the Mind of God, the Consciousness of the Universe. In that timeless moment, you know this has always been and will be the reality underlying human life. Those who have had the ultimate experience want, really want, to spend more time in that world of beauty if possible.                                                   That said, on lesser but still compelling journeys, some people would be unable to deal with the shock of something so radically different and reject the experience, even condemn it as dangerous.                Some people with mental illness are at permanent risk and should never do these substances unless highly supervised by professionals.                                                                                                                        As the use of the sacred mushrooms spread, a dedicated cohort of those who had had the experience would form a religion of the Revealed Light of Glory Church. This would radically challenge the existing culture. There’s more! You don’t have to live in the grayness! You can’t imagine what you are missing. Try it. I promise you’ll be mind-blown.                                                                                           Groups would secretly take the sacred mushroom and dance ecstatically in the Light. There would be an incredible blossoming of visual art and music to go with it. Celebrants would merge in love in the glory of the Light. The more this happened, the more the authorities, the placeholders of the old values, would persecute the Church. The conservative authorities would rapidly outlaw possession of the sacred mushroom and its use. They would persecute and jail those who used them, especially those who provided them to others. They would encourage people to spy on their neighbors and report suspicious activity.                                                                                                                     Fundamentalist churches exhort their congregations to stay away from the Devil’s spawn. The Church of Revealed Light acolytes, known as Revealers, now knowing what to look for, find tantalizing hints of these experiences long hidden in occult societies. They might find that these societies had, over the millennia, devised practices of internal awareness to cultivate the ability to bring this quality of light into one’s daily life.                                                                                                     The Revealers would travel to exotic places to spend years studying and practicing, seeking and sometimes finding stability in the Light. One early such one would return and publish a book, Be in the Light Now, that became a best seller. Over the decades, as more people had the experience of the Light and still functioned in the old society, increased tolerance would build, and scientists studying the phenomena would find that the experience of the Light made people happier, healthier, and more generous. Eventually, spiritual centers would be established where young adults could be initiated into the Light. They would call them colleges.                                                                                     

On a strong psychedelic trip, one may be experiencing the self as a vibrating energy field with a high fine frequency. Then suddenly, there is a letting go of that known into an even finer, higher frequency. One’s realm of perception has increased in refinement. There’s more to what one is. I like Bucky Fuller’s observation that all multiplication in the universe comes from further subdivisions of the primal tetrahedron we call God. Don’t bother with the use of the word God if that bothers you. The word God is loaded with preconceptions, some very emotionally charged. You don’t need to believe in an undefinable concept, but for the moment, let’s do this. If there is some primordial universal unity, then all multiplication, all the nearly infinite variety in the Universe / Multiverse, is a subdivision moving from the One to Evermore.
These transitions are evident because, by this point, the pulsating energy field is what you are. The manifestation of a different reality. This is an infinite and eternal field of being. However, I don’t know what eternal might mean if the universe’s heat death is coming in another 100 billion years or so.  A new sense of ourselves may be realized. In one way, our life experience occurs in a physical and temporal range so small, and our lives are so brief when seen in the cosmic context — while also being unimaginably huge and long-lived relative to the quantum reality.     You can simultaneously experience both of these and the entire continuum connecting them. In this state, you may know that size and time don’t matter in the highest spiritual realm. I tell my pivotal story about this in the Across the Universe and Back chapter. In this journey’s download, I learned that we should never underestimate the importance of any act of kindness and healing with self or others. Our beneficial thoughts and actions help heal the Mind of Humanity.
The use of psychedelics can produce an extensive range of experiences, depending on set and setting and underlying conditions. Even with a specific substance and dose, the adventures can be wide-ranging. The experiences can be entertaining, emotionally challenging, transcendent, and radically life-changing. Sometimes, the more vigorous journeys can be temporarily terrifying. Letting go of everything you’ve ever known, not just information but the very sense of who and what you are and what is real, can be difficult. Eventually, you must let go of all control of the situation and then fly like skydiving.
A biologically normal brain, clear intentions, a safe and supportive environment, and a trustworthy facilitator may be beneficial in finding the courage to open to more powerful experiences. In the 1960s–70s, many of us took heavy doses more casually than anyone suggests today. The vast majority of us pioneers did fine. There were some unfortunate tragedies, and the number was greatly exaggerated in the day’s media. Still, these can and should be very powerful experiences, so do your due diligence, and you should have life-enhancing and possibly radical life-changing experiences.              The differences between low, medium, high, or heroic doses are unfathomable until you’ve experienced them. It’s psychedelic’s unique nature that the effects are so mysterious and are often wildly divergent from daily life experiences. This is a unique property of psychedelics. There’s a radical difference from going, say, being sober to tipsy to drunk, or mildly stoned to the really-shouldn’t-have-eaten-that-second-hash-brownie, as compared to taking a light to medium to high to heroic dose of a psychedelic. It is a quantum jump beyond other mind-altering substances we can ingest.
Many people of my generation in their youth took low to moderate doses of a psychedelic and got high at a concert or sitting around a campfire or cozy in their home, and it was fun. Some got really high — the room or trees or their bodymind melting.
While many of us learned that Spirit is real and alive in the w Then, as many entered adulthood in our late 20s, family, work, and often kids came along, and taking a trip just wasn’t in the picture. Many of these boomers are being born again. Many of those with psychedelic experience were in their era before MDMA came into the picture in the mid-1980s. Some have now tried it and experienced its unique empathetic blessing. With biochemists and ethnobotanists active worldwide, newer interesting substances are coming onto the scene. Data from the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse suggests that in 2020, over 7,000,000 Americans used a psychedelic at least once. There has certainly been a steady increase in the public discussion of cannabis, psychedelics, and MDMA in the last few years. Netflix has just released an eponymously named mini-series, How to Change Your Mind, a documentary drawn from Michael Pollan’s book.
I feel much more comfortable talking about these substances and the benefits of their proper use now that the FDA is so enthusiastic about their healing potential. There needs to be more scientific research along with the… informal experimenting. The FDA has offered to give Breakthrough status to any experimental trial using psilocybin, or perhaps another psychedelic, studying their effectiveness in treating depression. Initial research has shown success rates beyond anything else known. It’ll be interesting to see how the younger generations will build on the boomers’ legacy and have even more exciting adventures. Searching ‘psychedelics and depression’ will turn up many listings.

The Light — Ohh the Light                                                                                                                   People often see eidetic images while on psychedelics. Oddly, there are several quite different definitions of eidetic. The one I use for these images is that they are vibrant mental images that do not come from an external memory source. The beauty and intensity of this kind of light is indescribable. It has to be experienced; since it’s a state-dependent experience, it can’t be remembered as it was. Lots of experiences are state-dependent.     The memory of a taste, scent, or touch is not the same as the experience. Those sensations can only be experienced in the state in which they occurred. Many things can be compared if related experiences provide a context.
There are no equivalent images as vivid in ordinary experience. The light I’ve seen that comes closest in intensity to these eidetic images is in the rainbow spectrum you see when refracted through a crystal. Those rainbows drifting around the walls and ceiling. I have a few of those hanging in sunlit windows in my home. Sometimes, when I see one of the rainbows on a wall, I like to go over and stand with it shining in my eyes. I move my head slightly to experience the entire spectrum from the edges of infrared to ultraviolet and back.
Each psychedelic substance has its unique quality. I think I could tell which one I had on in a blinded test afterward. During the timeless presence while enmeshed in those kinds of visions, it would never occur to me to ask such a question because there would be no me in a human sense to be able to think anything, much less something so mundane. There’s usually some brilliant light with all of them that increases as the dosage rises. It can be extraordinarily vivid and indescribably intensely beautiful in more delicate pastel shades. Things may also get dark, an absence of light. I believe most of my fellow journeyers would say something similar. In all cases, the experience changes dramatically depending on the dose. This said, we’re all different, and I am a visual type more than auditory.

Psychedelic Art                                                                                                                                               This category is difficult to define because it contains many genres. There are realistic, fantasy, surrealistic, and abstract. I think of Supreme Court Justice Stewart’s quote about pornography: “I know it when I see it.”                                                                                                                                              There is a subcategory I refer to as eidetic art. The difference between eidetic art and general abstract art is that eidetic imagery is inherent in some deep, usually unconscious part of our brains. Using psychedelics opens these in us; it can even take us into it as we become the light. You can find some of my psychedelic art at eideticart.com. You can find links to some of my favorite psychedelic artists at ecstatic-aging.com. Alex Grey is the best-known psychedelic artist with his CoSM (Chapel of Sacred Mirrors) art and the extraordinary Entheon temple.
Video is a much better way to provide more of a sense of psychedelic images because it can be radiant and morph and flow. Digital artists, especially in the movie industry, have been getting better and better at this. I’m the age to remember when my friends and I took acid to see 2001: A Space Odyssey for the rush at the end as he soars away. Yellow Submarine was another psychedelic date. They look so dated today as technology has evolved.

Bad Trips?                                                                                                                                                             I discussed these earlier. Bad trips are an unfortunate reality. However, much of what has been written about bad trips has been tragedies. Nonetheless, the media has been hysterically biased in exaggerating their number and severity. Sources falsified stories, most likely trying to do a public service by scaring people away from these mind-destroying Drugs. In one infamous example
that made national news, a college President claimed that six of blind while staring at the sun on LSD. False.
I read an interesting article on the surprising effects of accidental ultra-high doses of LSD. One occurred when eight people snorted powdered LSD, thinking it was cocaine. They took about 350 times a regular dose. They got very weird. Five went into a coma, three were intubated, and four had generalized bleeding. Yet within twelve hours, they were all normal again, and none showed any adverse long-term effects. I don’t know of any controlled studies where adverse effects have been reported. There’s a good piece on this at MichaelPollan.com. Besides the appropriate set and setting, applicants for research studies undergo background checks for mental health problems in their  families. Generally, those with psychoses are kept out of the study.
There was an interesting disagreement about bad trips on a Sam Harris Waking Up podcast with Francoise Bourzat. She’s a very experienced, multiculturally informed psychonaut, psychedelic facilitator, and the author of Consciousness Medicine. She doesn’t believe there are any bad trips. Difficult trips, yes, but not bad. Sam Harris strongly disagreed from some psychedelic experiences he had when he was young. I had one after doing psychedelics approximately 400 times without ever having a bad trip. There was nothing remotely redeeming about it. I discuss it in the Across the Universe and Back chapter.

Contraindications                                                                                                                                           I’ll repeat this. There are contraindications for psychedelic drugs, including internal and external conditions. People with a personal or family history of mental illness should not be doing them. I say should not be doing them, rather than simply don’t do them, because I know of such people personally and have heard of others with some of those conditions who have gotten real value from journeys. Our minds are delicate organisms. It’s best not to mess with them casually.                                                       There are different ways of looking at the data. I’ve read in anti-drug sources that people with schizophrenia use cannabis more than the general population. Yet it is also true that people with schizophrenia use other drugs at a higher rate, so that questions the validity of any causation claim. I also read that in states with medical marijuana, schizophrenics have a lower suicide rate. In current formal studies, the researchers are meticulous about this. If a candidate has psychosis in their family, even in a second-order relationship such as cousins, they may be excluded. I wish I could tell someone; ask your doctor or someone knowledgeable to answer that question reliably. By their late twenties, most people will have shown sufficient evidence of these types of issues. So, if the interested person hasn’t, they are probably safe when the appropriate set and setting are provided.
I read about a schizophrenic who accidentally took a massive overdose of LSD. It didn’t end his condition, but the voices in his head changed from self-destructive to maternal and kind. I have a friend with bipolar personality disorder who has found that he tends to become hypomanic after a trip. If necessary, he is informed of that by his wife and takes a prescription medication he can take that mellows that out.
In the early days, as at Spring Grove, the researchers were more casual and focused on working with people with mental illnesses. Stories of adverse outcomes have much more sway than those with positive outcomes, so we want to avoid those more personal and socio-political reasons.

Thinking About Adverse Effects
Cannabis use has its issues. Too much of anything isn’t good for us. It’ll be a while before we have good data on the long-term consequences of its use. I have used cannabis for 55 years, and it’s been a reliable ally. I smoked way more when I was young than I can imagine now. I noticed that when smoking so much so often, all I got with it was living in a sort of dull haze. There was no real high feeling or insight. So, if someone is smoking a lot of pot and not having the experiences they want, the best solution is probably smoking less. Cannabis is more potent now, which is great because one can get from a toke or three what they used to get from smoking a joint, and that’s better for our lungs.
The only real problem with MDMA comes from it being illegal, so people are forced to get it from unregulated and possibly dangerous sources. It is harder on our bodies. You can be sort of hungover and tired the next day. People who are depressed might have a wonderful experience on it and a psychological crash the next day. There are supplement protocols online that can reduce or eliminate these kinds of negative aftereffects. I don’t know if there are any adverse emotional consequences. I imagine some could be in dealing with clients with severe trauma.                                                                       Therapists may ask their clients in advance if there are any areas they do not want to go into and honor that. There’s quite a bit of research with MDMA now, so we’ll know more about all of this soon. The FDA study using it for treating PTSD should be complete in 2024. It may then be legal to prescribe for treating PTSD with specially licensed therapists. This raises the question of, if it’s good for sick people, how bad can it be for healthy people? — more on this in the MDMA section below.
Rating drugs by criteria such as addictiveness and toxicity finds psychedelics to be the safest of all categories of drugs.                                                                                                                                                         A few years ago, I heard a funny story about how the British government established a panel of experts to research recreational drugs, looking at the relevant issues. They then reported back, recommending the appropriate classification of them. When the government officials saw the results, they weren’t happy. The British government did not want to publicize a report showing, for instance, that beer is more harmful than LSD according to their criteria, so they buried the report.
Given the illegality of many of these substances, there can be a whole range of legal consequences. Along with fines or incarceration, people can have other consequences, such as losing their jobs and having their professional licenses revoked. They could be banned from social service programs such as housing or educational financial aid. They could lose their right to vote, etc. Some of these extra-jurisprudential consequences can be more harmful to their lives than a fine or some minor jail time.

Proper Dosage Is Important                                                                                                               Dosing is a concern with many medicinal and non-medicinal substances. This is especially true with psychedelics. When people talk about the differences between different psychedelics, they need to remember that low doses of all of them are very different from medium and higher doses. I have heard people mistakenly judge a low dose of psilocybin mushrooms as not being as good as a higher dose of LSD without knowing that the difference in dosing was the primary factor.
There’s a humorous Alan Watts story from his first LSD trip. He wasn’t particularly impressed by the brighter light and whatever and spoke of that publicly. Then, some of his more experienced friends corrected the situation, and his subsequent journey was very different and quite impressive.
This is important to know: Individuals have different, sometimes very different, sensitivities and tolerances to these things. This can lead to some problems. One person’s dose that allows them to function in the world might have someone else leaving this world. In the best circumstances, having your sense of self and connection to this reality melting can be scary. It can be terrifying and dangerous in the wrong ones.                                                                                                                                                     There are many stories about this. Having one’s mind open wide in a bar can be like having dark, slimy, eel-like creatures oozing through your mind. Standard advice with LSD is 50 mcg (micrograms, millionths of a gram) for a festival or concert (dedicated driver). 100 mcg is excellent for deep introspection. Being alone should be fine if you’ve had some experience and are careful. Then 250 mcg and going beyond. (somewhere quiet and peaceful). The adverse effects I’ve seen or heard about from reliable sources involved an unstable person or adverse circumstances.
Researchers following standard guidelines have not found negative effects. A common mistake is when, out of fear, people take too little. They don’t ‘get off,’ and may find themselves irritated and frustrated and receive little to no value from the experience. Some people contemplating a psychedelic journey are afraid of losing control and freaking out. On a moderate or higher dose, one leaves behind the whole psychic construct of their identity that could freak out. The normal emotional mammalian beingness is gone, soon long gone. By the time the individual’s awareness can relate to this world again, they’ll have a somewhat different perspective.
In the 1960s, some people were into pretty random testing to see how well someone could function on a heavy dose of LSD. The CIA tested it on unsuspecting subjects to see if it could be used to interrogate people by getting them out of their defenses. It didn’t work out, as getting them to think about what they wanted was impossible. It has been reported that some of the CIA agents got into dosing each other at parties and the like. There was an ego thing about who could be very altered and still function.  Check out the YouTube footage of a 1950s housewife on LSD and an LSD on An Army Unit Tested.
So many of us were loose about handling LSD that accidental dosing wasn’t that rare. I attended a cinema group at a college where the organizers put out a bowl of punch with small pieces of crushed LSD tablets floating around in it. The regulars knew about it, but not everyone was a regular, so there were some shocked moviegoers. The stories about those didn’t seem to create a serious problem. It was generally accepted in the culture that dosing people unexpectedly wasn’t cool.
One night during the intermission at Stephen’s Monday Night Class in San Francisco, a little girl handed him a piece of candy that he didn’t know had been liberally dosed with LSD. Her parents thought he would enjoy that. I wasn’t there, but I did listen to the tape recording of the event later. After a while, he announced that he’d been dosed and was going to leave the hall. The audience cheered him on to stay, and he did. We could hear it as he really started getting off. I don’t remember the details, but I do remember him sounding very high, resonant, and present, saying something like, “I Am Life. I Am….”

Purging                                                                                                                                                           Purging, i.e., vomiting sometimes happens on psychedelics, especially ayahuasca and peyote. Some facilitators may be willing to provide anti-nausea medicine in advance or as needed. In more traditional ceremonies, purging may be considered essential. Even if you hate vomiting, don’t worry about it, as you’ll be in a very different state when it happens. My experience with purging is that the deeper the UG is coming out of my guts, the more I’ve felt some dark, ugly energy in the core of my being. It was like I was shining a laser light of consciousness into cobwebs. It dissolved the old crud. I’ve had that in dry heaves as well. It can be a powerful, deep cleansing experience.

Other Psychedelics                                                                                                                                       While having a DEA license, Sasha Shulgin created a couple of hundred psychedelic and related psychoactive compounds. These drugs, formulations, and their subjective effects are recounted in his books TIKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved) and PIKAL (Phenylalanines I Have Known and Loved). He, his wife Ann, and some friends would take these unknown substances to see what happened. This is not as risky as it might sound because, as a very experienced chemist, Sasha could reasonably predict their potential physiological effects and appropriate dosage. His work led to the popularity of MDMA. 2C-B was a favorite and has become popular in the subculture.

Which Psychedelic is Best?                                                                                                                     There can be no answer to that question. It’s like asking which music or painting, etc., is best. It depends on who you ask and for what purpose it’s being used. Aficionados may have their favorite ones — or their favorite ones for different situations and doses. Many informal and more organized groups use these substances more or less ritually. This is especially true with ayahuasca since it is semi-legal.       A couple of years ago, Rolling Stone magazine had an article about ayahuasca. They estimated that there are about a hundred group ayahuasca journeys a week in the (combined) New York City and San Francisco Bay areas. It’s fun to think that the first people to take their own shopping bags to the grocery store or buy a Prius may now have their ayahuasca group — societal evolution at work.
There are some pretty distinct differences between various psychedelics. Mushrooms tend to have brighter and more geometric patterns than LSD. On 2C-B, you are more in your body in higher states, which is why it’s a Burning Man favorite. It’s been so long since I’ve done pure mescaline that I don’t know what to say about it except that its longer coming-on time led to a funny, almost very not funny story, that you can find in Chapter 4.                                                                                                               Ayahuasca journeys vary more from trip to trip than the others. It came along later in my life when I was less interested in experimenting with novel substances. I’ve only taken it twice. My two experiences were very different from each other. You can find that in the same chapter.
Early on, I agreed with the Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa that imposing one culture’s spiritual beliefs and customs wasn’t a good idea. I have no interest in chanting or singing in Lakota or some other Indian language (peyote) or Portuguese (ayahuasca came from Brazil). While those kinds of cultures hold no interest for me, I know many mature people who find them attractive and useful.            Many hippies idolized those kinds of cultures for being spiritual and in a harmonious relationship with nature. While there is some truth to that, they were also superstitious and fierce with their
torture of captives. Modern anthropology agreed with me. Then, Postmodern anthropologists changed it to say they were only brutal after the European invaders messed with them. That phase has passed, and we’re back where they were brutal again. This didn’t make them bad people, only typical for that stage of development.
I have felt a sense of otherness with mushrooms, peyote, and San Pedro cacti. I’ve encountered weird astral entities on DMT. On one occasion, one of them answered a question I had in a language of colored bubbles. I wasn’t able to hold on to the answer. I’ve heard many stories from trippers about getting particular messages in their journeys. If I learned that I had a rapidly developing terminal illness, I would take a heroic dose of LSD because I’ve found that to be the most effective way to go straight to the Mind of God. A Universe with the features to allow life to develop requires a series of astoundingly complicated and unimaginably finely tuned characteristics. It didn’t just pop out like this 6,000 years ago. I discuss this briefly in the Anthropic Principle section. in Chapter 5’s Lower Right Quadrant.

Research                                                                                                                                                           This section could be a book in itself. Michael Pollan did a pretty good job with that in his recent book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. There’ s a lot about this online. Check out YouTube, the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, and the MAPS.org website. There’s much more information available, and it’s growing rapidly.
The Johns Hopkins team uses synthesized psilocybin and has been looking for the sweet spot in the dosing where the subjects have a positive response with less chance of a more negative one. I heard this: On the high end, they’ve used 30 mg/70 kg — or 2.5 g dried Psilocybe cubensis (I think), the most commonly available mushroom. Seventy-eight percent reported it to be one of the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives, and almost a third experienced some psychological struggle,
although no lasting adverse effects.
At 20 mg/70 kg (1.5 g cubensis), there were almost no strugglers, and everyone felt they benefitted but with less intensity. They found that giving high-dose subjects a taster dose (1 g?) first had even more positive outcomes than other higher dosers. A month after the study, 61% said it was their life’s most influential spiritual experience. Fourteen months later, 94% rated it in their top five.                                    The FDA has publicly stated that psilocybin, because of its safety profile and efficacy in helping such a wide range of issues with a single dose, is in a different category than any other medicine they’ve ever studied. You couldn’t eat enough to harm yourself.
Initial research suggests that it is the most effective treatment ever for depression, anxiety, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It has also been used in treating cluster headaches, as have other psychedelics. This has been lifesaving, and the dose can be sub-threshold so they don’t have to have the altered-state experience.
When the FDA has determined that some substance may be the only or best thing for some disease or condition, they give it the Breakthrough Therapy status. This means that instead of having a company do their research and then submit it to the FDA to evaluate and possibly require further testing, they work with the researchers so that once that’s complete, if it has worked as hypothesized, it’ll be ready for prescription.
They’ve done that with MDMA for PTSD and have offered to do that with psilocybin for depression. Unfortunately, they don’t fund the studies.

Facilitating Journeys                                                                                                                                     The process of facilitating a psychedelic journey is more commonly referred to as ‘guiding’ which many think is a poor word choice. We were easing that term out of the vernacular, and then Michael Pollan’s book came out and set that back. Many people in the facilitating profession are still working towards that end. The problem with the term guide is that the guidance in a psychedelic session is almost totally inside, with one’s higher self or internally accessible spirit entities. No matter how many times someone has taken a psychedelic, they still can’t know what’s going on inside the mind of the person they’re sitting with. There may be clues of a general sense if someone is moaning or smiling. Still, the details and the sheer immensity of what is happening aren’t available.
The guide, sitter, placeholder, host, facilitator, etc., is responsible for preparing the participant and the environment in which the journey occurs. MAPS and an increasing number of other organizations have relevant workshops. In the old days, we were usually really loose about such things. Mostly, it still worked out okay.                                                                                                                                                         The number of crises and tragedies that happened should not be ignored or denied; yet, given the tens of millions of trips taken, harmful outcomes were rare. Sitting with someone on an MDMA journey is different because they aren’t so out of this world. It is a more psychological experience. The MAPS protocol for treating PTSD has the subject do talk therapy before doing an MDMA session. They prefer a male and female support person to help the person as they feel into the source of their issues.                 Then, they do an MDMA session. This sequence can be done up to three times. As of this writing, the therapy is in the final and large-scale phase 3 stage. Initial reports have found a 70% success rate in treating subjects’ PTSD. These coaching groups often restrict their public work to using cannabis and ketamine where they are legal. Increasingly, communities, from cities to states, have decriminalized some, usually organic, psychedelics. They are all still illegal under Federal statutes. So, what to do if one wants to take a psychedelic or MDMA journey?                                                                                               A few research programs are going on, but they are few and far between. Talk to friends with hippie backgrounds, which might get you a reliable lead. Look up psychedelic therapy classes or training programs. If you can talk to some people privately and get to know them, they might have someone to recommend. Confidentiality is required. Signing up on Signal or another encrypted email and phone service will be useful. Sorry that I can't be more specific.

Recreational Use?
Sure. Why not? Is there something wrong with having fun? I’ve heard so many stories from people who took some mushrooms, laughed and laughed, and were overcome by the beauty of nature and the depth of their feelings. This can all happen without things getting weird or challenging. There could be some valuable insights and sharings in those, too.
The contemporary psychedelic culture often goes to lengths to disavow recreational use. I don’t know anyone who considers heavy doses of psychedelics recreational. They can be many things, and maybe sometimes they are recreational, depending on one’s definition of recreation, but not according to mine. Lower doses are a different story.
One can experience nature as a vibrant, radiantly beautiful, interconnected web of life. If all the requisite criteria are met, psychedelics can provide the most incredibly amazing,pleasurable sexual experience a couple can ever have. Second place isn’t even close. If you doubt that, I hope you get to test it sometime. There's more about this in Chapter 7, Fucking Unbelievable!
I’ve been involved in scenes with groups of people journeying where hilarious riffs were going on around the room. Observations about life. Humorous insights into one’s foibles. Humor about the ironies and absurdities of ‘normal’ life. Shane Mauss is a stand-up comedian who did a MAPS-sponsored tour of comedy clubs in 2016 and again in 2019, all about psychedelic drug use. He is hilarious. Unfortunately, I don’t think a video of it was ever released on YouTube or elsewhere.                  The Third Wave podcast has an episode with him (#29: What’s in the DMT Headspace?) and other psychedelic-oriented ones. Bill Hicks, one of our all-time great comedians, who unfortunately died young, had some hilarious things to say about psychedelics. You can find a couple on YouTube. Check them out. I just listened to three of them. They were LOL.

Cannabis                                                                                                                                                           Cannabis (marijuana, pot, bhang, Ganga) is one of humanity’s longest cultivated plants, with many practical uses such as fiber, nutritional oil, protein, and altered states. Seshat, the Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing, was portrayed with a cannabis leaf in her headdress. The Hindu Vedas list cannabis as a sacred plant. There are many, many books about cannabis and, increasingly, about its medical benefits.
As of 2024, medical marijuana is legal in 37 states and DC, and somer degree of recreational marijuana is legal in 27 states, with more on the way. A funny phrase often bantered about is, If it’s good for sick people, how bad can it be for healthy people?     Research has found that about 15% of users can become physically addicted to it. Fortunately, it only requires about two weeks of abstinence to break the physical craving. If, for whatever psychological and lifestyle issues, someone has an addictive relationship to a substance, marijuana is probably the mildest and the healthiest, physically and psychologically.
Cannabis has been used as a mind- and body-altering plant for thousands of years. We are in an engaging, long-overdue social transformation with it. One of its aspects that makes generalizing about its effects difficult is that, as Andrew Weil, MD, said in his 1972 book, The Natural Mind, marijuana is an active placebo. It doesn't do anything in particular, but it does something. It can act as a stimulant or a sedative, increase or decrease appetite, stimulate thought, or encourage quiet appreciation.
Cannabis varieties are divided into sativas and indicas. Sativas evolved in the subtopics. They are less bushy and have longer growing seasons. Their high is considered to be more cerebral. Indicas evolved in central Asia so are bushier, have a shorter growing season, and are more resinous. Their high is more physical.                                                                                                                                                                This is overly simplistic, and now cannabis varieties are evaluated for use more by their terpene profiles. These are the chemicals that give t Cannabis can have prosocial benefits. While some people may get more sensitive and shy on it, I’ve noticed that most of the time when I get stoned with friends, there are more interesting interactions. People become more open and connected through a shared resonance. It’s as though there’s a carrier wave we are riding on. We find more humor and wisdom; we are more self-reflective and can laugh at our own foibles. As we talk, we share humor and useful insights. So often, other times when I'm in social gatherings, the conversations can be excruciatingly mundane or go on and on about the bad news in their own and other people’s lives and the world around them.                                                                                                                                     Certainly, some of that can be helpful, and much needs to be talked about. But when it continues to be a dirge, like a bad reality show and little else, it's time to light a joint or pass a pipe, light and lighten up. It can be abused. Fifteen percent or so of users may develop a physical dependence. Chronic use can cause some problems. The good news is that a few weeks of non-use ends the dependency. Whether you are for or against cannabis use, you should recognize that the legal prohibition of it is an unhinged attack on people’s freedom. The War on Drugs has been a multi-billion dollar waste of public resources that has not deterred harmful drug use and has harmed many otherwise innocent people’s lives. And for what? Smoking a medicinal herb?                                                                                                        Given its medical usefulness, the obvious question is, If it’s useful for sick people, how bad can it be for healthy people?. The same can be said with appropriate constraints about MDMA and psychedelic use. The American Medical Association formally objected to the proposed Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 that officially criminalized cannabis. The Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men
[people; sentient beings] are created equal and independent, that
from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Let’s honor these rights and not forget the pursuit of happiness! Cannabis medicines are now widely available. Research of the potential uses of its hundred or so cannabinoids and several hundred non-cannabinoid chemicals is in its infancy. The less active CBD, CBN, CBG, and Delta 8 are now used along with the psychoactive THC. More research will surely find many more valuable compounds.
Cannabinoids are a particularly interesting group of molecules, as they fit the nervous system’s receptors for our natural endogenous cannabinoids. These substances affect so many systems. A quick search finds that they are involved in central nervous system development, synaptic plasticity, and the response to endogenous and environmental stresses. They regulate basic physiological functions such as sleep, mood, appetite, learning memory, body temperature, pain, immune functions, and fertility. They also affect lipids synthesis and turnover in the liver adipose tissue and glucose metabolism in the muscle cells.
The plant-based cannabinoids are called phytocannabanoids. These can help reduce seizures, nausea, vomiting, inflammation, anxiety, and depression. However, in some people and situations, the experience can increase anxiety and paranoia. Sometimes, this kind of response can be mitigated by smoking less.                                                                                                                                                              Given the above, there is the question of whether using plant-based phytocannabinoids interferes with the optimum functioning of the endocannabinoids and, if so, can this be ameliorated by less frequent use? I don’t know how to test this.
I’ve smoked cannabis for 55 years, and so far, all the systems regulated by the endocannabinoids are working fine. I smoke it a lot less frequently than in my early hippie days, which was pretty much all day long, and the pot was less potent, so….
I find cannabis useful as an aid in initiating activities. It’s a stimulant for me, though not necessarily for others. I might be hanging around inside, not wanting to go out on a muggy summer day to do some yard work. Then, if I take a toke or two or even three (but I better not take four or five because I might start dissociating in a very unpleasant manner), then I'm up and out and having a good time doing what needs to be done. I know that’s not how it affects everyone.
People’s sensitivity to marijuana varies. The qualities of its effects change if it is used frequently every day and in larger doses. I’m speaking from personal experience.
A joint or three before breakfast was once my gang’s opening gambit. My experience was that decades ago, when I smoked it habitually, the effect was reduced to a dull haze that wasn’t interesting, useful, or much fun. Was I trying to numb my feelings like people often do with alcohol and other downers, or was it something else? My self-reflection was less developed back then. Before long, life’s circumstances in a committed relationship and an actual job led to much less pot smoking — while I enjoyed it even more. That has never felt like a loss.                                                                                            The positive potentials of cannabis use evolve as the user’s life does. Over the past 50-plus years, I’ve found that smoking pot reliably opens me to valuable personal and broader intellectual and spiritual insights. Using it in periods of confusion has often clarified the nature of that situation. These range from explanatory insights to knowing the appropriate actions to take. It can be both entertaining and fun or challenging. Using it often brings philosophical and spiritual insights.                                             One of my mentors referred to marijuana as ‘an organic teaching machine.’ In my college alcohol abuse era, a common mindset among my friends was how much we could drink and still function. Could we drink and keep it together better than the other guys? Our standard for functioning well was way too loose. I’m very grateful that, driving drunk, I never hurt myself or any innocent person. I have long since evolved to see how little it takes to get to the level of effect I want.
Using cannabis increases one’s physical, emotional, and mental sensitivity. Increases in sensitivity can be more — and less — pleasant and useful. Whereas one person might become more gregarious in a social situation, another might become more anxious. Reducing one’s dosage and/or changing the environment may be helpful to mitigate uncomfortable outcomes. One study using rats found the females to be much more sensitive to marijuana’s effects than males. That may be generally, but not always, true with humans. I’ve noticed that if the man in a smoking couple sets the pace, the woman may get a higher dose than she wants, and if the woman sets the pace, the man may not get enough. I’ve also known women who could smoke more than me and still function well.
My first several times smoking pot was with a girlfriend, and we would exchange tokes until she was done, and I would stop, too. That didn’t do anything at all for me. Then, I got my own stash, smoked more, and had a most interesting experience. That episode is recounted in Across the Universe and Back.
Some people will have negative judgments about pot smoking, which is their right. They might question why a relatively psychologically healthy person would use it. Is it a crutch for people who can't be content without using a drug? Or does it add something positive to the individual, couple, or group using it that doesn’t occur, can’t occur in the same way without it?
It is evident upon experimentation that an animal can have an experience interacting with a plant that it cannot have any other way. Whether one likes cannabis or not, it is a different experience than they can have on their own. A critic might make the case that those who ‘need pot’ are more or less failures.  Perhaps they need more therapy, should meditate, find a guru, or take Jesus as their Savior. Whatever makes people happy and more productive is fine with me, and I would appreciate the same consideration from others.
In November of 1970, I smoked some excellent Jamaican ganga, quite a bit of it, actually. I lay down and had my first experience of letting go of all sense of gravity, which was quite startling. I hadn’t thought about how omnipresent the sense of gravity is. The following came out:
To find the gift rich enough to embrace my soul
as golden lattice loosens Earth's hold on me
One place to look but do I dare, eternal dreams
bid man beware
Immortal search engulfs us all, three centers
merge in one man's hall
Joining stream for ocean's end,
this way now
but how then?
I just got a sweet rush reading this. It’s been a very long journey since then. And the final question remains unanswered. I don’t believe there are any final answers to this kind of question, only more questions.                                                                                                                                                                         A lot of reporting about negative individual and societal effects of cannabis use comes from stories in which cannabis was combined with other drugs, especially alcohol. Cannabis is a relatively subtle high. Alcohol, uppers, and downers easily dominate it.
A widely circulated study of teen cannabis users was worrying. As I remember, the subjects were 20 or so New Zealand teens whose brains were scanned, and various deficits were found. It got a lot of press. It was later discovered that the researchers hadn’t excluded teens who were multiple drug users. When the study was replicated using cannabis-only students, no such deficits were found.
A WebMD article stated that, after reviewing a number of studies, the author concluded that any adverse intellectual effects from frequent marijuana use appear to wear off when the user quits smoking. He said that after 72 hours of abstinence, heavy users memory and thinking deficits diminish in significance compared to non-users.
A Swiss study of teens who use cannabis found this: Teens who use cannabis do not report more frequent psychosocial problems compared to young people who abstain from the drug, according to survey data published in the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
The University of Lausanne investigators analyzed data from over 5,200 students aged 16 to 20. Of these, 455 subjects reported using only cannabis, 1,703 subjects reported using both tobacco and cannabis and 3,150 subjects abstained from both drugs.
Compared to those subjects who reported using both drugs, cannabis-only youth were more likely to receive good grades, play sports, and live with both parents. Cannabis-only youth were also
less likely to have been drunk in the past 30 days or have used other illegal drugs.
Compared to those subjects who abstained from pot and tobacco, teens who reported using cannabis only were more likely to participate in sports and have a good relationship with friends.
Cannabis-only youth received similar grades to those who did not smoke pot but were more likely to report having skipped class. Youth who abstained from pot were more likely to report having a strong relationship with their parents; however, cannabis-only youth did not report suffering from higher rates of depression.
Investigators concluded: “Cannabis-only adolescents show better functioning than those who use tobacco. Compared with abstainers, they are more socially driven and do not seem to have psychosocial problems at a higher rate.”  This fits what has been obvious to me almost ever since I started using cannabis. Cannabis critics like to refer to it as a gateway drug, although it is certainly far more common for youths’ gateway drugs to be alcohol or tobacco. In my case, cannabis use quickly moved to psychedelic use, but that was at the heyday of the hippie culture, which I enthusiastically embraced. I suppose cannabis may have preceded opiate use in some cases. Again, alcohol was probably there first, and opiate use has its own culture for better or worse.

Marijuana: The Anti-Drug Agent
The extent to which medical cannabis users discontinue or reduce their use of pharmaceutical and over-the-counter drugs is a recurring theme in a recent survey of pro-cannabis California doctors. The drug reduction phenomenon has obvious scientific implications. Medicating with cannabis enables people to lay off stimulants and sedatives — suggesting that the herb’s active ingredients restore homeostasis to various bodily systems.
A sampling from a couple of doctors: Chronic pain patients report reduced use of opioids, NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, and sleeping pills. Psychiatric and insomnia patients reduce the use of tranquilizers, SSRI antidepressants, and sleeping pills. Neurologic patients reduced the use of opioids, muscle relaxants, NSAIDs, triptans and other migraine headache remedies. Medications discontinued or reduced include OxyContin, Norco, Percocet, Vicodin, Flexeril, Valium, SSRI antidepressants, and blood pressure medications Norvasc and hydro-chlorothiazide.
Approximately 1% of my patients report reduced reliance or discontinuation of seizure medication by substituting cannabis for Dilantin and remaining seizure-free. Many of my glaucoma patients no longer require their Timoptic drops.
Here’s a fun one from the NIH’s Journal of Clinical Investigations: Cannabinoids promote embryonic and adult hippocampus neurogenesis and produce anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects. Meaning that cannabinoid use helps create more brain cells and less-stressed users.
The state of Colorado funded a $2,000,000+ grant to study the effects of smoking cannabis on vets with PTSD. The results were positive.
Another researcher, Gary Wenk, PhD, in an article, Can Smoking Marijuana Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease?, concluded: “Research in my laboratory has demonstrated that stimulating the brain’s marijuana receptors may offer protection by reducing brain inflammation and restoring neurogenesis. Thus, later in life, marijuana might actually help your brain rather than harm it. It takes very little marijuana to produce benefits in the older brain; my colleague in France, Dr. Yannick Marchalant, coined the motto ‘a puff is enough’ because it appears as though only a single puff each day is necessary to produce significant benefits.
So, on it goes. It’ll be great when we have more science. Speaking of which, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in the first of his three CNN cannabis documentaries, Weed, talked about his surprise when he found that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) guidelines on cannabis research required that the goal be to find a negative outcome. The implication and practice were that if a researcher found a positive outcome and published it, that would be their last grant from the DEA. Yikes — talk about blatantly
politicized science!
This said, Andrew Huberman has a podcast in which he lays out several adverse effects linked to cannabis use. Interestingly, a large study of two Jamaican communities in which one group smoked ganja and the other didn’t, found no adverse effects in the cannabis users. It’s been decades since I read that, and the only benefit I remember is that the mothers who used cannabis were more active and engaged parents.

Cannabis and Intellectual Creativity
Here is a fun personal story that may help one think about this subject. One relaxed morning, with nothing pressing on my schedule, I took two tokes on a bubbler filled with cold mint tea. (Cooler smoke is less irritating to the lungs.) A half-hour later, I started driving through the countryside to my closest small town. I am comfortable driving while stoned. I’ve probably driven tens, maybe even a hundred thousand miles on it — mostly longer drives and rarely in busy city traffic.                                                     On this morning, I was casually cruising along, mildly stoned, letting my mind wander. One part involved catching myself when I was meandering through some useless thoughts. I would then return to emptiness, from where I meandered off again. I’m better at doing this when stoned. Then, I got into an interesting run of ideas and wanted to remember them. Knowing that my aging memory isn’t as good as it used to be, I picked up my phone and recorded brief voice memos of them. As the ideas came, one was, ‘It’d be fun and perhaps instructive to write this up.’
So it began: I thought about how many people, especially newbies, talk about their fear of losing control when considering a psychedelic trip. From my perspective, that’s funny, given that, as Stephen R. Schwartz eloquently pointed out, we are all completely controlled by the field of life energy we live in all the time.     Everything from our health, the weather, the price of Bitcoin, the competence of other drivers, and so much more are out of our control. In any case, we know that when people take a more potent psychedelic, the person they identify as, the one who worries, is let go of. There’s no one left to worry, and it will be far more interesting that way.
I laughed at myself as I thought: Since I don’t get notices about having voice memos, I saw how I decided to, with Siri’s help, leave myself a reminder with which I would get a notice later to look at the voice memos. I thought: Really — leaving a message to look at a message. Well, whatever works.
I thought that perhaps I should research using low-THC (5-mg) gummies as a physical and mental supplement. Then I thought about how I wanted to review the science of how eating THC chemically changes it by going through the liver before getting to the brain and causing the subjective effects.
I remembered the joke in my Metallectual Adventures where MacMouse says I’ve given up striving for enlightenment and am settling for just being a saint. That’s actually not a joke. It’s real. in using sainthood as a reliable state of maturity                                                                                                                     The goal of becoming enlightened in the sense of entering a nondual state is to no longer be attached to the illusion that my sense of myself as a thing is real, to acknowledge that the reality is that I’m only a relatively coherent stream of energies and memories. So what am I giving up if I don’t get enlightened in this lifetime? Greater fear of dying and death, suffering more emotionally by taking things more personally (although emotional maturity in being honest with oneself and realistic about what is happening around them does help with that, as well). In any case, it isn’t a worry. As the graffiti said, Death is the greatest rush of all. That’s why they save it for last.
I thought about how being on psychedelics, as well as in dreams and so much else in life, raises a question: Do you have to be able to remember an experience to get value from it? There are many times when you do have to remember what you are doing and your present goals. There are also many state-dependent memories where you have to be in that state to remember them. Think of sensory experiences.                                                                                                                                                                       The memory of the taste of something in a meal is the same as the taste. The memory of an orgasm is not an orgasm. So if you took a powerful psychedelic journey and for part of it were inundated by cascades of insights about your life and about the nature of the Universe, and you even felt wholly merged with the infinite and eternal Mind of God, experiencing beauty,
goodness, and truth far beyond any you’d ever experienced before, feeling inconceivable awe, and immense joy and love and gratitude — the next day you’d know for sure that your memory of it, to the extent that you could have any memory at all of parts of it, was a pale, pale version of what you’d experienced. Would that be okay? It would have to be because there is no way your mind could hold more than a tiny bit of a strong trip.                                                                                                                         Do these kinds of experiences and insights that you can’t remember matter? Are they helpful if you can’t remember them? When insights flood you, and you don’t know them from one moment to the next, do they still have value? There may be the memory that you had an important download, even if you can’t remember the content. The key thing is this: Neuroscientists know that the default mode network (DMN) where we have our usual thoughts, histories, and plans is not the author of them. Studies have found that people’s muscles start the process of moving to, say, pick up a glass of water before the person consciously has that thought. Decisions are made, and our DMN, our ‘I’ has no clue about how. None at all.                                                                                                                                                  I find this quite humbling. We get some of this indirectly, but not as a subjective experience. Next was   the idea of writing this down for this section to demonstrate the notion that cannabis use can help with creative intellectual, or at least pseudo-intellectual, thought.
Then I saw an attractive woman walking down the sidewalk, and that got me thinking: All I could tell was that, given the leggings she wore, she had a nicely shaped butt and legs. Then, thinking about sexuality in our society, I thought about the relationship between form, function, and context. So, even though she had a nice shape, I had no interest in having sex with her. That would be the area of context and function. It is okay to appreciate other people’s form, as it is to appreciate the beauty of
flowers or music and the vast mystery of the universe as it presents itself to us every moment.                   It’s also fine not to enjoy this kind of thing, although that seems very sad. Regarding sexuality, the focus on form without context creates many problems. Modern culture has exacerbated the difficulties. It used to be that, for the most part, we only had our neighbors to compare ourselves to and not to the relentless onslaught of media-hyped images. This often creates problems in sexual relationships. It may make it more difficult to find more or less ordinary-looking people, especially the old, sexually attractive.   It can get ugly. A prepubescent child can have the same qualities of form, the firm round butt, etc., of a sexually attractive adolescent or adult. In sexuality, not separating form from context can be disturbing and criminal.
Then, after another short pause, I thought I should add to this story that on my way to town, I was a little distracted and almost missed a turn. Re stoned and driving: Is it safe? I remember reading a University of Washington study several decades ago that found that if the driver was an experienced cannabis user, on a usual dose, with experience driving on it, they drove more safely than straight drivers. There are the stoner jokes about some dude getting pulled over by the highway patrolman for going down the freeway at 40 mph. Since cannabis is a stimulant for me, I’ve found it especially helpful to use it when I’m tired.
And then, I was thinking again about the cannabis free-flow state of mind when I’m just hanging out and streaming ideas and reflections I want to capture and can’t remember very well or maybe not at all. Often, my sweetheart can, and that’s often helped me get them down. Unfortunately, from my point of view, so many good ones have been lost. I used to try and write these things down, and that didn’t work. So slow and cumbersome. Then I started using my phone, keeping it near when I was in such a state as I am in now while driving. I realized that I wanted to write more about being spacey. It’s not being caught up in one’s current surroundings or linear time stream, that’s for sure. To be spacey is generally used as a pejorative. Yet it can be entertaining and perhaps useful when you don’t have to be aware of your environment or ordinary time. There are numerous stories about scientists, artists, and philosophers who had important breakthrough ideas while in a spacey state.                                            The free-floating aspect allows thoughts to bubble up from the subconscious, where connections that can’t be in an active state may be made. I thought about how being in a stoned stream, spinning off jokes and insights that I can’t remember the next moment, isn’t an issue of memory. By analogy, imagine if you were running downhill on an uneven path and tried to stop suddenly — you’d almost certainly go for a tumble. It’s like that, only with the mind.
I thought that a good thing about cannabis, compared to alcohol and many other substances people use, is that it is so mild neurochemically that in an emergency, you can straighten up almost immediately. I’ve known doctors who sometimes got stoned while on call, feeling confident they’d be as competent as ever if something came up for them to handle.
Thinking more about being spacey, I’d like to tell people to loosen up their minds sometimes. Let your thoughts run free. By free, I mean open to any subject that comes up, free of the inhibitory conditioning of ordinary reality, full of multiple concerns about all kinds of things, all manner of whats, whens, whys, and whos arise.                                                                                                                       Unfortunately, for many people, it’s too often the negative things that come up, the resentments and disappointments and the like, that drag our moods down. This kind of thinking diminishes the quality of our presence. There can be so much of this conceptual reality in one’s mind chatter. Ideas about what I should be doing, how I’ve failed, damn that person and how they treated me, etc.       Eckhart Tolle calls this the anger body that, when turned on, is always looking for trouble. This can be towards ourselves or people and things in our environment.
We are hardwired to prioritize negative experiences. It’s a remnant of living in our ancestor’s dangerous environments where being lost in the scent of the flowers could get you killed. Unrestrained patterns of giving in to negative thoughts and feelings deaden our lives. This is why we have not only mind-altering substances but art, sports, comedy, cuisine, and all the other distractions, for better or worse. While these are necessary and can be wonderful, there is something special about creating value and novelty in your mind. The neuroplasticity of our minds lets us reprogram the neurons in our amygdala to greater awareness of the Good and Beautiful in the same scenario in which we might otherwise not notice the positive qualities.     When stoned, I often find myself self-reflective, seeing things I’ve done well and not so well and how to deal with the latter.
Then, my mind drifted back onto the topic of driving stoned. I remembered a relatively recent incident when, late at night, on a long drive with four to five hours to go, I felt tired and took two strong tokes. That was too much, as I’m prone to dissociating on cannabis and leaving this reality. I noticed that the freeway, the cars, and my body were taking on an ephemeral, otherworldly quality that was not where I wanted to be while driving. I forced myself to focus and stay present. I stayed in my lane and followed the taillights in front of me. It was stressful for a bit, and then I settled down, and it was fine.
Then, I thought about how I wanted to convey the mentally stimulating effects of cannabis use and how to communicate its value. While not cannabis, I remembered a James Fadiman story in which he talked about an experiment he conducted. He recruited 48 scientists and engineers stuck on a professional problem for at least six months. They were each given 100 mcg of LSD. That’s a lowish dose but a lot more than a microdose. He gave them an hour for it to come on and another hour to  peak. Then, he directed them to think about their problem.
What happened? How did they do? According to Fadiman, 44 of the 48 had breakthroughs that a group of their professional peers validated! I believe he has more information about these in his book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, if you want more details. In a video about this, he points out that with all the problems we have today, it is practically criminal to not be using these substances more.
Then, for whatever reason, I thought about the consequences of being alone, really alone. Not just lacking the presence of others but more alone — as if in a featureless cell with minimal distractions or stimulation. How awful that would become — which is why extended solitary confinement is recognized in the human rights world as torture. I remember being on an Indian vision quest where I sat in a big hole in the ground for three days. My Aspie brain about exploded. That was just me. Some other people there talked about how relaxing it was for them. Oh, well. The drive ended.
So, do you think this stream was a useful creative thought-producing experience or just stoned, incoherent rambling? I found it useful. This was just one of many similar experiences I’ve had while stoned on cannabis. Some of those have had much more emotional gravitas as I reviewed aspects of my life experience.
In Chapter 4, I discuss how, early in my hippie odyssey, I was introduced to using pot for formal meditation practice. I found it helpful with this caveat: At first, my mind was more active, not less. Then, as I maintained my meditation practice for a while (15 minutes or so?), The meditation went deeper, and a no-mind state more readily arose.
Noted author and meditation teacher Will Johnson has posted a podcast episode on YouTube, Pushing the Envelope: Buddhism, Cannabis, and LSD in which, among other things, he talks about using cannabis to enrich one’s meditation practice. He asserts, and I agree, that its use does not violate the Buddhist prohibition of inebriation.
I have a lot to say about cannabis and sex in Chapter 7. This includes the statistic that cannabis users engage in more frequent lovemaking than non-users. Cannabis use increases my physical and emotional sensitivity. In this state, lovemaking becomes a spiritual experience more easily as my identity and presence in the ordinary world falls away, and I fly with immense joy.
Cannabis use can have negative consequences. More research is coming on this. We should all pay attention, not be attached to our preconceived notions, and refuse to see what we don’t want to see if that’s the case. It’s estimated that perhaps 15% of cannabis users may develop a physical addiction. The good news is that it takes only two weeks of abstinence to break that physically addictive compulsion. Then there’s psychological addiction, which is a complex study. People can be addicted to things that please us — in no particular order: coffee, sex, television, screen time, video games, politics, sports, and, let's not forget, food and pornography.
So much has been said about this that there’s no need to elaborate. However, on a personal note, I  helped raise seven teenagers, and it’s evident that, except for the legal issues, if teens are going to use something, they are much better off using cannabis than alcohol and/or tobacco. As recreational substances go, marijuana seems to be the mildest, safest, and healthiest.
Whatever one’s proclivities regarding using or not using cannabis, it is obvious that arresting people for mere possession of it is absurd, cruel, personally and socially harmful, and a waste of government resources — although, if one had stock in a private prison company, it’s lucrative. I’m sure that in the future, people will look back at this era stunned by the stupidity of the so-called War on Drugs.
This all said, Andrew Huberman has a podcast discussing some negatives of using cannabis. Since he doesn’t use cannabis, I can see why he might not appreciate its benefits.

Other Cannabinoids                                                                                                                                     Given the couple of hundred cannabinoids and other possibly exciting compounds in the plant, much more research is needed. These molecules offer an active area of scientific and personal exploration. These are less psychoactive than the THC in recreational and some medical formulations. The best known is CBD, which is generally no more active than to cause slight relaxation or stimulation, along with its possible medical benefits.    CBN is reportedly a better sleep aid. I have only heard a little about CBG, and I understand it’s interesting. Much more information will be coming about all of this.

Delta-8 THC                                                                                                                                                         This is particularly interesting. I was introduced to it as being similar to CBD. Based on my friend’s experiences and the instructions on the label on a bottle of it, I swallowed an ounce of watery green liquid containing 30 mg Delta-8, and WOW! It came on strong. It was such a body rush that I couldn’t stand up for over four hours. Those hours were, however, quite fascinating. I found myself having three viewpoints simultaneously.
One part of me was quietly observing a second part of me that usually exists in the subconscious, talking to my Default Mode Network. Some mysterious I witnessed the deep, usually unconscious Self explaining to the normal DMN about its mistakes in its understanding of itself and the world. The information was so practical, even more so in some very practical manner than when I’m having insights on low levels of psychedelics or MDMA.                                                                                               Then, the experience shifted to a state in which, for a couple of hours, whenever I closed my eyes, I had short, vivid, dreamlike visions one after another. It was definitely a surprisingly intense and novel experience. As of this writing, I haven’t tried it again.
I did talk to a person who had a similar experience, albeit on a much lower dose. She was taking 12.5 mg of Delta 8 at bedtime as a sleep aid, which was helpful. Then, one evening, when she was exhausted, she took it a couple of hours before bedtime because she thought that might help her get to sleep. Much to her surprise, she had a remarkable hours-long trip similar to mine in its drama and practical wisdom re her life story. I’m not sure of its current legal standing.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide                                                                                                                       LSD has quite a storied history for being less than a century old. Of course, it was a fascinating century. LSD’s history has been told in great detail. Discoverer Albert Hofmann’s autobiography, My Problem Child, is fascinating reading. He was a chemist at a Sandoz lab. In 1936, he was working with derivatives of ergot fungi. He was creating various lysergic acid compounds. They weren’t proving useful in animal experiments. For some ineffable reason, he kept thinking about the 25th one in the series and, in 1943, resynthesized it. Despite his impeccable lab technique, he was contaminated, resulting in a light buzz of some sort. He was curious about what that was, so he decided to test the LSD-25 on himself.
The standard procedure was to take such a tiny dose that it could have no possible effect and then double it repeatedly until…. He ingested 250 mcg, which is a pretty good hit of LSD. Synchronistically enough, that was the standard dosage in the 1960s tabs. He felt the need to go home (I’m sure he did), and, given that it was during the war (April 19, 1943), his mode of transportation was a bicycle. He jumped on it and took off, with his lab assistant following behind. His assistant later reported that Albert was flying along down the road. He went to bed, and his wife called a doctor friend. When he examined Albert, he couldn’t find any worrying signs regarding his physiology. Pulse and blood pressure were fine — no signs of poisoning. The only obvious physical effect was that his eyes were wildly dilated, along with his incoherence.
Albert wasn’t sure whether he was alive, dead, or insane or would ever be normal again. After several hours, he was coming back into ordinary reality and felt somewhat calm and invigorated. April 19th is now commemorated around the world as BicycleDay.
Hofmann published his results in the Sandoz journal, and scientists reading it could not believe that  such a small amount of any substance could have any significant effects. Some of them acquired this LSD to see for themselves. I’ m sure there were some very surprised scientists. He imagined that LSD might become popular in some European artistic and intellectual circles. He couldn’t have imagined that tens of millions of people would take it someday. Storming Heaven, by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, is a good, though dated, reference to the history of psychedelics.
Dear Grandpa Albert lived to 102. He was physically and intellectually active until the end. I had the  good fortune to talk to him in 1988 at the International Transpersonal Psychology Association convention in Santa Rosa, California. I thanked him for his life’s work and told him that if taking LSD wasn’t the most important life-changing experience I’d ever done, it made any others possible. I also told him that if there were any justice in the scientific establishment, he would win the Nobel Prize twice, in Peace and. Chemistry. He laughed and said, “Maybe in the next century.” Although with their rules, he’d have to be still living. Oh well. He also pioneered microdosing many decades before its recent popularity.
LSD takes about an hour to come on, then quickly rises to its peak and stays there for an hour before slowly bringing the user back over the next 6–8 hours. Back — but not the same as when they left. I discuss some of my most significant trips in chapters 4 and 6. In the early 60s, LSD use started an accelerating ascent in the culture’s zeitgeist.
The most prominent proselytizer was Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary. He has been described as everything from a cultural hero and irascible trickster to a dangerous narcissist and criminal. It is widely cited that President Nixon called him the ‘most dangerous man in America’, although I understand there’s no actual record of that statement. What cannot be denied is that, for all his quirks, he was a genius.
Leary’s legacy is especially controversial. Besides the love or hate camps, there are the psychedelic researchers and therapists who had been merrily experimenting before it was criminalized. It was placed in Schedule I, which has high abuse potential and no medical usefulness. It is tough to get research grants with these substances. Over 600 journal articles re psychedelic use had been published in the previous permissive era.
There was much excitement for using these tools to understand the mind better. Their frustration with Leary is that the publicizing and mass adoption of psychedelic use led to the ban on research. That's true, and it has taken almost half a century to really get it back on track.
Dosing on LSD is reliable if the product contains what it should. I’ve found this to be very reliable over the last 50-plus years. Perhaps I’ve just been lucky. Its potency is measured in micrograms (µg or mcg), millionths of a gram. A common microdose is 10 mcg; 100 mcg is a low dose; 250 is an average solid dose. From there, it goes up and, for all practical purposes, never stops. Since it’s non-toxic, it’s possible to take heroic doses. I took 2000 mcg once. That was an extraordinary experience. The highest dose I’ve ever heard of being taken on purpose, is the 25,000 mcg that Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi took prior to his Zen monk days. At that time, he led an LSD-manufacturing family whose Clear Light acid was said to have excellent purity. His autobiography, A HeartBlown Open, is full of amazing stories. His adventures in India are especially interesting. I highly recommend it.

Psilocybin Mushrooms                                                                                                                         Psilocybin is the precursor to the active ingredient psilocin in that family of mushrooms. Note: These terms are almost always mispronounced in the public sphere. As commonly used, psilocybin is not ‘sill oh sigh ben’. To be proper, it should be pronounced as it is spelled: ‘sigh lo sigh ben’. I noticed and found it humorous that in the How to Change Your Mind Netflix special, the researcher pronounced it as commonly used, unlike what they do among themselves.
There are close to 200 species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Psilocybe cubensis is the most commonly available one because it is easy to cultivate. Several companies openly sell psilocybin mushroom spore kits for home cultivation. There’s a debate about this. The spores do not contain psilocybin or psilocin. The kits are readily available. Psilocybin, while illegal under federal law, has been decriminalized in some cities and states. People I know have had various degrees of success using these kits. I don’t know enough to recommend any particular one.
Some other species are more potent. I heard a hilarious story that may be apocryphal. (Let me know if you have any info on this.) Supposedly, in the late 60s, the University of Washington re-landscaped the campus, and the wood chips they used for mulch started sprouting thousands of potent blue angel psilocybin mushrooms. That may have passed with little notice in previous decades but in the 60s…!         There are also psilocybin truffles, which aren’t truffles but the underground mycelium-rich sclerotia. They have about the same potency by weight as the dried mushrooms.
Mushrooms degrade in quality reasonably quickly if not preserved carefully. Fresh, well-dried ones, vacuum-sealed and frozen, will stay potent for a long time.
Academic and medical researchers use synthetic psilocybin, which can be more precisely dosed. I understand it’s costly if you could find it. Besides the precision dosing, it is also commonly used in research partly because it lacks LSD’s highly controversial reputation. Also, it is shorter-acting — 5 hours compared to 8–10.    The joke is that the researchers use it so they can get home for dinner.
There’ s serious commercial interest in psilocybin since it is becoming accessible through legal channels for research and is legal in some localities. There are also new ways of synthesizing it, including using yeast, that look promising. Like other psychedelics, the effects of psilocybin are highly dose-related. Generally speaking, with cubensis, 1 gram is a buzz, 2 grams and you are tripping, 4–5 grams and you are transcending. There is a community of people who take 30 or more grams at a time. I haven’t the remotest idea of what kind of experience such a dose would create, nor do I care.
The visual experience with mushrooms is incredibly colorful and geometric. The closest I’ve ever come to that intensity of color in a normal state is the sunlight coming through a spectrum-producing crystal. If you see one of the rainbows on a wall, place
your head between it and the source so the spectrum crosses your eyes. It’s the most intense, full-spectrum natural light I’ve ever seen. However, once looking closely at the anthers on a pistil of a red hibiscus flower produced something similar in its deep vibrating richness, if not nearly so intensely bright.
Lemon tekking is a method of preparing psychedelic mushrooms to ingest. The effect comes on faster and stronger, given the same dose. Some suggest taking half your usual dose. The mushrooms or truffles are prepared by grinding them into a cup and squeezing enough lemon juice to cover the material. Soak for 20–25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, and then they are ready to ingest.                                                                                                                                                                                                             One source said to expect the trip to come on in 10–45 minutes rather than 30–90; the peak should hit sooner and be stronger; the journey should have a shorter duration and less tendency to produce nausea, although I’ve never experienced that with them. There are two theories about how lemon tekking works, and perhaps both are simultaneous. One is that the acidification in the container begins the material breakdown before it reaches the stomach. The other is that it speeds up the transformation of psilocybin into the psychoactive psilocin. I haven’t been using the lemon tekking method because I’m fond of chewing fungi and mixing it with my saliva.

2C-B                                                                                                                                                                       2C-B is a lesser-known psychedelic. It comes up in an hour and lasts 5 hours. It is popular for a good reason. I’ve heard that it was Sasha Shulgin’s favorite out of the many he formulated. In lower doses, it is enjoyable. Lovemaking and dancing are extraordinary — thus its popularity at Burning Man and related festivals. I write about some of my experiences with it in chapters 4 and 7. In higher doses, it is very psychedelic. Its usual dosage range is 15–25 mg. For reasons I explain in chapter 4, I once took 40 mg. I don’t recommend that unless you are a very intrepid psychonaut.
There’s a combo sometimes used by hip couples. They take a dose of MDMA and, after four hours, assuming they have had the usual empathic sharing, take some 2C-B.
They use a lower dose so they don’t altogether leave their bodies. It comes on as the MDMA is fading. Couples report having extraordinarily beautiful lovemaking.

Ayahuasca                                                                                                                                                  Ayahuasca has the advantage that it can be done legally in the US by congregants of one of the two licensed ayahuasca churches. While its use is illegal outside of those churches, I haven’t heard about the government cracking down on other groups’ use.
Ayahuasca came onto the scene later than LSD and mushrooms. I don’t remember when I started hearing more about it in our culture — mid-late 1990s.                                                                                         I had previously read about it and other Amazonian entheogens in books by ethnobotany explorers in the region. Amazonian natives have used it for millennia. This brew combines two primary plant products. The ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) sources an MAOI inhibitor, allowing the DMT’s psychoactive effects (most commonly from Psychotria viridis, the ‘Queen of the Forest’ to become active.
In the early 1930s, after several decades of use, the Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper Raimundo Serra founded the Santo Daime church, combining elements of African- influenced Catholicism with the indigenous psychoactive plant tradition. Another ayahuasca church, the Uniao Do Vegetal (UDV), was founded in 1961.         Both churches are recognized as legal in Brazil. In 2006, the Supreme Court authorized the legal use of ayahuasca in the US as a religious freedom. Ayahuasca’s popularity has soared, partly due to its legal and quasi-legal statusOne important caveat with ayahuasca use is that, unlike all the other psychedelics, which are among the least toxic plants known, the interaction of the MAOI inhibitor with some other substances can prove harmful, even fatal. Facilitators of these journeys know this and provide the necessary counseling for a safe experience.                                                  Author and teacher Gabor Mate said this re his Ayahuasca Breakthrough “I realized that all that stuff that happened to me doesn’t define me, all that has happened to my family and in the world, as tragic as that has been, it doesn’t have to define who I am and my future or my relationship to myself or my relationship to anything, so it’s a liberation from my past.”

MDMA                                                                                                                                                             MDMA (Adam, X, ecstasy, Molly) is often called the Love Drug. It can be classified as an empathogen because it makes people more empathetic. It is an extraordinarily fascinating and helpful substance. It was patented in 1914 by Merck as an adjunction to another medication. It quickly fell into obscurity. Julie Holland, MD’s excellent book, Ecstasy: The Complete Guide, explores its fascinating scientific, legal, and cultural history in depth. The first description of its subjective effect (1978) described it as ‘an easily controlled altered state of consciousness with emotional and sensual overtones.’                          A recreational dose of MDMA is usually around 1 mg per pound of body weight. 125 mg tablets have had wide popularity. I knew a group in the 1980s taking as much as 800 mg at a time. I can’t imagine — although I never heard of any harm coming from it.
I’ve usually taken 125–175 mg and up to 240 mg (1.5 times my weight) with no adverse effects. Users often schedule a half-strength booster dose an hour or two after the initial amount.
The toxic dose is stated as 2000 mg. That’s 10 to 16 normal doses, so there are rarely serious problems with its use. People are sometimes given counterfeit substances that may create physiological problems. Once, as recounted in Chapter 4, I took 400 mg of MDMA in conjunction with 40 mg of 2C-B. Both were heavy doses. I wanted a life-changing experience and got it.
In the MAPS PTSD studies, they use lower 75-mg doses to keep people more grounded. Also, these people have been doing psychotherapy as part of their MAPS protocol, so they should be able to focus their consciousness on what they need for healing.

History                                                                                                                                                                    Sasha Shulgin reformulated MDMA in 1976. One of the early users, Leo Zeff, was so impressed by MDMA’s therapeutic potential that he came out of retirement and went around the country sharing it with some 4,000 therapists.
In the early 1980s, when MDMA first hit the scene, it was known as Adam. ‘The condition of primal innocence and unity with all life.’ It started becoming a popular recreational drug at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, of all places. With widespread use came government scrutiny and placement in the DEA’s Schedule I as an emergency measure. Schedule I means there is no medical usefulness for the drug, and it has a high level of abuse potential.                                                         A federal judge was assigned to hold a series of evidence-gathering hearings. After listening to the testimony of psychologists, pharmacologists, and various researchers, he recommended it be placed in Schedule III, a much less onerous situation. For various reasons — some scientific (no double-
blind studies of efficacy) and others related to our society’s general prohibition of things that make you feel good — it was then, based on the DEA’s recommendation, placed in Schedule I.                               Some people who were interested in being able to continue exploring its therapeutic uses appealed and eventually lost. Shortly after, a long process of attempting to bring MDMA back into therapeutic use began. More on that later. MDMA, now known as ecstasy, entered mainstream consciousness through the rave movement, initially on the island of Ibiza, then London, the Netherlands, the US, and on — young people in a club, finding an empty warehouse, setting up lighting and a loud PA system, accessing partiers through privileged contact lists, and eventually moving outside at giant gatherings, morphing into the Electronic Dance Movement (EDM).
Then hundreds to tens of thousands of wild, stoned revelers danced ecstatically through the day or night to loud techno music in a state where you could feel in love, be in love, and be in love with every person there. It was an extraordinary subculture — one that scared conservative parents and politicos. The first part of this is described in detail in Julie Holland’s book.
The use of ecstasy continued to rise exponentially, further alarming the authorities concerned with protecting the health and well-being of our youth — this increased efforts to criminalize the club scene and distribution with ever-harsher penalties. The ensuing negative publicity only served to increase its use.
Despite all the scare stories about brain damage, MDMA is not toxic at the regular dosages.                  There are many other examples of flawed research designed to demonize these substances. One particularly egregious use of bogus science was a study by George Ricaurte published in the prestigious journal Science, asserting that a single recreational dose of MDMA caused permanent brain damage. He correctly gave monkeys the appropriate dose level for their body weight. In contrast, researchers have sometimes given animals larger doses, assuming that would create the same effects as more frequent smaller doses. His finding was that it caused the death of dopaminergic neurons, leading to a greater likelihood of lifelong depression and even Parkinson’s disease.
The article was widely cited in the popular media, increasing public fear and institutional hostility towards ecstasy. A year later, the study was recalled, with little
notice, because it turned out he had been giving the monkeys methamphetamine, not MDMA He responded that the pharmaceutical company had sent him the incorrect drug. They responded that it wasn’t possible, as the two substances were made in manufacturing plants in separate cities.                     I first took MDMA in 1985 when it was still legal. It was then widely known for its wonderful recreational qualities, while its therapeutic potential was not appreciated until later. That discussion is found in the Across the Universe and Back chapter.

The FDA Gets Involved  NOTE: As of this writing, June 2024, an FDA advisory group has recommended that MDMA not be approved for therapy. I read their findings and it seems they were old straightpeople who had no experience with or understanding of the relevant issues,                                 The FDA reviewed the available research and determined that MDMA was not toxic in the standard dose range. (According to Julie Holland, the first certified ecstasy death occurred in England when a young man reportedly took 18 hits! Dehydration from dancing for hours in a heated environment without taking in liquids can be dangerous, even fatal. Dehydrating one’s spinal fluid is apparently a really bad idea.)
Since some therapists knew MDMA to be uniquely effective in treating PTSD and general psychological woundedness, in couples counseling, and for enhancing self-esteem, there would be a continued effort to make it available. Rick Doblin became the single most influential person in this endeavor. He knew that working through the FDA’s protocol for approving drugs for medical use was the only way that would happen. He returned to school, got a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard, and founded MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) in 1986.                                        Its purpose is to encourage and facilitate research of MDMA and related substances (psychedelics, cannabis, ibogaine, and whatever else may arise with potential usefulness).
The book Through the Gateway of the Heart came out that same year. It contains a collection of stories from the files of psychotherapists who had given MDMA to some of their patients. The stories were so powerful. Here are some of the names they gave their stories:

I Was Resting in the Palm of His Hand
The 1000 Petal Lotus Unfolding and Unfolding
The Energy Flows Through Me, I Make It into Music
Springs of Enchantment
All of Me, Just Being
To Bathe the World in Light
I Can Now Move through the Trauma
Affirming Who I Am, Where I Am Going
The Fire of Love and Trust Banishing Demons of Fear and Pain

You get the idea. The entries were by category: Female, Male and Groups. While reading the book, I couldn’t relate to the females’ stories, as sweet as they were. Then I got to the men’s section:

Peace with Great Energy, Tangible, Expansive
MDMA Reveals Emotional Truth
The Experience Saved My Relationship
Examining My Emotions with a Sharp Lucidity
Honoring Our Differences
Now I Feel the Pain as an Ally, not as an Enemy                                                                                                 Rather less imaginative use of language. A few of the men’s stories were more like the women’s. Gay or…?                                                                                                                                                                             Thus began a 16-year back-and-forth that finally allowed psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer to give MDMA to 12 PTSD patients. In 2001, he and Kathleen Brady from the University of South Carolina submitted a protocol to the FDA to study the potential use of MDMA in patients with chronic PTSD.        In 2001, the Phase 1 study was approved. It was so successful that the FDA approved a 36-person Phase 2 trial. The FDA is a largeregulatory agency working with medical devices and drugs. In the 1980s, due to the urgency of the AIDS epidemic, it established a division to deal with experimental medications. That group ended up being given the responsibility for psychedelic research. The book Acid Test provides an interesting account of this process.
The FDA has a special Breakthrough status for drugs that are the onl for or are better than anything we already have for a specific disease or condition. The difference is that usually, a pharmaceutical company does its research and submits it to the FDA for review, during which the FDA may require further study. With Breakthrough status, the FDA works with the researchers as they go along so that the drug will be ready to be prescribed when the trials are finished, assuming they are successful. It has done this with MDMA for PTSD. It has announced it’ll do this for studies using psilocybin (the active ingredient in most magic mushrooms.
The FDA faced an interesting decision when the researchers in the MAPS study asked to be allowed to give the therapists-in-training a dose of MDMA. But they don’t have PTSD, so why? The case was successfully made, and it would be good if the therapists had some firsthand experience with it.                Later, the FDA made another interesting and good decision when it allowed some of the partners of people with PTSD to take MDMA. After all, it’s an empathogen, and I imagine those relationships could use some of that healing energy.Phase 3 of the MDMA PTSD study is a 300-plus-subject study expected to be completed in 2024. Early results from completed segments have met the FDA’s success criteria. There have been some interesting peculiarities in researching MDMA and psychedelics. With most drugs, the control group receiving a placebo can’t tell the difference. But because of the high level of subjective experience with these, it quickly becomes obvious. A well-known anecdote from the 1960s concerned some Harvard theology students who were given either a strong dose of psilocybin or a placebo. A couple of hours later, if one person is saying, ‘Maybe I feel something and another is staggering around, holding his head, shouting, I see God!’ The placebo subjects have been outed. Researchers have tried using a high dose of niacin as a placebo because it causes a rush.                               They’ve attempted to lower doses of the substance, but, as best I know, there isn’t a way to make the placebo process work with these. It was also decided, given the dynamics of having a partner with PTSD, that it could be helpful for a couple to take it together within the therapeutic context. The MAPS therapeutic protocol for people with PTSD is to have them in talk therapy with male and female co-therapists long enough to understand their issue as well as possible. Then, they do an MDMA session with the therapists. The FDA allowed the protocol to, when deemed necessary, do two more rounds of the sessions of psychotherapy and MDMA therapy.
More and more research is being done. The biggest holdup for moving it into the legal pharmaceutical world is the cost of the research. For the MDMA for PTSD study, MAPS had to raise over 100 million dollars privately for the Phase 1- 3 trials. If you’re interested in this, the MAPS podcast has an episode with founder Rick Doblin about how psychedelics came to be on the agenda of the FDA’ division studying experimental drugs and how that’s gone since then. Covid has slowed up the testing program.     Preliminary findings of the first cohort to complete the process are very encouraging. About 70% of the subjects were PTSD-free. They hope to complete this process and have MDMA legal by prescription to work with specially trained therapists.
Another relevant issue in thinking about MDMA therapy is that there is much anecdotal evidence that combining MDMA with a psychedelic is even more effective for profound, deep psychological insight and healing than either one by itself.  I was told by someone who would know that there is no foreseeable future in which the FDA would approve a study using such a combination. I’ve read that such research is underway in Switzerland. In urban slang, this combo is called ‘candy flipping’. (I don’t like that name because it s too disrespectful). I have much to share about this combination’s extraordinary benefits in Chapter 4.
Then there’s the legal issue. MDMA would be permitted for prescribed medical use and still be illegal for everyone else. This reminds me of the funny quip about medical marijuana: If it’s good for sick people, how bad can it be for healthy people?  Some prescribers may support off-label use. In her book, Ecstasy, Julie Holland, MD, briefly discusses some early experiences using MDMA to treat depression and schizophrenia. Her book was published in 2001, which was very early in the therapeutic study of MDMA. Still, she has the best history of it and much more.
In 1986, I wrote this.

THE EMPATHOHELIX
EMPATHOGENS
EMPATH
EMPATHY
EMPATHS
EMPATHIES
EMPATHOGENISIS
EMPATHOGENETICS
HOMO-EMPATHIENS
OMNI-EMPATHIENCE

Ibogaine   (Note: There are several ibogaine experiences after this Ch 6 section)   This is unique as far as current ethnobotany knows. It doesn’t fit into any of the other categories. The trip lasts for 24–36 hours. It is sometimes called a psychedelic, but its effects differ significantly from any psychedelic substance. Using a single dose of it has the remarkable ability to stop narcotic and other drug addictions with no withdrawal symptoms. I know it is being used in clinics in Canada, Mexico, and Europe.                                                                                                                                                                           U.S. science politics is often void of commonsense and sometimes criminal (another story). As I remember it, Carol Mash and colleagues at the University of Miami were researching ibogaine with positive results when the research was suddenly stopped. The reason I heard given was neurotoxicity — except the neurotoxic effect was found at much higher doses than therapeutic ones. There was gossip about giving a Schedule I drug to students. In any case, toxicity at high doses is almost universal in medicine and life. You can die from drinking too much water. Psychedelics are the major exception.
Research has continued. As I understand it — and I’m only peripherally aware of what is happening — there is some debate about whether ibogaine really cures opiates and other addictions or reduces withdrawal symptoms. I suspect it does some of both.
I took it at a clinic in Canada in 2005. I discuss this in Chapter 4. My addiction wasn’t to drugs. It was to feel that I was a terrible person because I’d done something so awful that if ‘they ever found out, they would kill me.’ I didn’t ever feel safe in this life. I tried to hide myself as best I could by being innocuous. The ibogaine journey was incredible, challenging, and life-changing. It helped heal things  in me that all my other therapies hadn’t touched.
There is at least one movie, Ibogaine: Rite of Passage, and a couple of YouTube
videos about it.

MDA                                                                                                                                                                      This substance is related to and similar in effect to MDMA. In the 1960s–70s, it was widely known and used as The Love Drug. It is considered to be less empathic and more psychedelic than MDMA. I used it a few times back in those earlier days and don’t remember much about the experiences. I didn’t have a loving partner to do it with, so its benefits would have been more limited.                                                     It has been making a comeback in the last few years. I tried it again several decades later and found it a healing, smooth, sweet experience. I did feel more tired the next day than after an MDMA experience. It enhanced my feeling of love with my partner in a manner that persisted — a kind of pleasant extra adoration.       Unfortunately, the side effect of jaw-clenching can be strong in MDA, and for my partner, it was painful for a few hours, plus she felt quite a bit of abdominal discomfort. I have a very experienced friend who is very fond of it even hough he has occasionally purged on it. Given the other options, I don’t see a situation where I would do it again.

Other Psychoactive Substances
There are many substances I consider to be life-enhancing. Vitamins and other supplements could be placed in this category as well. There’s information about exciting ones for enhancing healthy aging in The Nitty Gritty of Aging, Chapter 8. Following are a few of the more interesting ones.

Gender-Specific Hormones                                                                                                             Testosterone and estrogen supplementation can be quite helpful. If exploring these, please consult a medical professional. Hormone use can be tricky. Testosterone and male erectile aids are life-enhancing substances, especially as I’ve aged. Good testosterone levels positively affect many systems and decrease the odds of getting heart disease, dementia, cancer, muscle atrophy, and depression. An older male physician of mine was very positive about testosterone supplementation.
I believe that Cialis/tadalafil, besides its help in sustaining erections, is good for us because it increases the nitric oxide in our blood. This helps support the immune system and dilate blood vessels, which is good for heart health and more. It is considered safe for men on blood thinners but not for those on alpha-blockers. See Chapter 8 on some other prescription drugs for aging men.

Salvia Divinorum                                                                                                                                             This plant is a fascinating one. I’ve only tried it twice. The first time was smoking the leaves with a partner who had been growing it. I don’t remember much about that except that it was pleasantly odd and prosexual. The second time was not pleasant because, for a long time, it was as if I had some crazy old redneck woman ranting in my head. That said, the literature about it is very interesting. It is usually described as a quick onset, short-term psychedelic.                                                                                           Some enthusiasts rave about its spectacular effects. Some say it dramatically affects their interoception, i.e., how they feel inside their body. The Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia show on VICE TV titled Shepherdess has an episode on it. There’s a lot on YouTube. It is still legal on the federal level, although some states have passed laws prohibiting its use.

3-MMC (metaphedrone)                                                                                                                                This tend to produce more subtle similar loving states. What makes it so interesting is that it does so little to alter or discombobulate one’s feeling. It takes about an hour to have an effect, which lasts several hours, followed by 4 hours or so of mild stimulation. I’ve described that in  Chapter 4. It is known for its sex-positive potential, especially when synergized with cannabis.                                           The heart-opening quality of the experience can become the driver of a loving union. It can open a couple to new dimensions in the sweetest part of the orgasmic realm that is later more accessible without it. I have found that it seems to heal the heart below the level of content. Currently, it doesn’t seem to be on the DEA’s prohibition list and hasn’t been scheduled as an illegal drug. If it gets popular, no doubt that will change.  It’s now been Scheduled  So much for the Declaration of Independence’s statement that, among other rights, the government should honor the pursuit of happiness.
On higher doses than I’ve experienced they say the pleasure is  so intense that it is very uncomfortable,  which sounds like an oxymoron. Maybe someday I’ll try that and add that to my experiences here.
3-MMC is a fascinating and, in my experience, unique substance. I think it could become popular if it wasn’t made illegal and semi-popular anyway. The thing that makes it unique is what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t get you high, give you a body rush, or disorient you at all. If you wanted to go to the store, you would drive there with no more concern than if you hadn’t taken anything. So why do it? Well, because it opens your heart intelligence for a few hours in a manner that is as profound and therapeutic as it is gentle. No rush, no coercion of any kind. Just sweet, wise, compassionate open-heartedness.
The friend I got some from told me this story about him and his girlfriend. They’d had a few beautiful experiences on it. On this occasion, they spent much of that time just hanging out, walking around the yard, and talking while exquisitely enjoying each other’s company. They had been meandering long enough, and he was ready to go to the bedroom to see about getting sexual. He told her that, and she was good with that. He walked to their bedroom door and stopped. He looked back at her, waiting for her to follow him. He watched as she continued to fiddle with whatever she was doing and started getting irritated. Then he realized that there was nothing valuable in that and watched her.               Then he realized that she didn’t need to coddle him or humor his whims, that she was a strong, independent woman — and he felt so proud that she was his woman. She came over, and they went into the bedroom. He didn’t talk about what happened next but sounded happy as he told the story.           This a simple example of enhanced heart intelligence. I’ve been hearing other stories about remarkable healing experiences. One man overcame lifelong shame about confusion over his gender issues. Another man overcame shame about his sexual desires. An MDMA-trained therapist friend of mine has begun using 3-MMC in therapy. It finds it to be less dramatic and more refined than
MDMA. He sent me this:

I’ve been thinking about my and others’ experiences with 3-MMC. It’s gentler than MDMA but a little stimulating for a few hours afterward. It’s less serotonergic and more dopaminergic. 3M seems to enhance concentration—I’ve noticed that on 3M, I can dive into a topic and stay intensely focused for hours. (There are preliminary reports that it helps ADHD; take 50 mg once a week, and ADHD symptoms are reduced. There is no research on this, though). It is also well known to temporarily eliminate shame, as it also opens the heart. It is very much an embodied experience, and it tends to amplify the sensual and erotic. & can be very pleasurable. It also can enhance intimacy. Unlike other medicines, this one doesn’t have an agenda. You can direct your experience wherever you want. All of the above would make it an excellent medicine for therapy, personal and relationship work, especially for  involved. It might be an ideal medicine for Enneagram types 2, 3 and 4 because their core emotional issue is typically shame.
 But there’ more. Turning to the more spiritual side. 3M facilitates absorption states. These are rarified non-dual meditation states that are not full-blown enlightenment but feel like it. They involve deep immersion and literal absorption in one's experience, and they have a nondual nature because separation vanishes. A certain kind of merging with experience or the object of experience happens.
 Absorption is blissful, ecstatic, or both. It’s not considered true enlightenment in Buddhism because it’s a temporary state, and suffering returns when it’s over. Nonetheless, it’s a rare and profoundly spiritual experience and valuable if you don’t get attached to it. (Theta binaural beats enhance the absorption effect.) It doesn’t cause ego dissolution like the classic psychedelics. (That’s probably obvious.) If the set and setting are right, it produces ego malleability and flexibility. The sense of self and identity feels more free, more flexible. Disidentification is more natural. Change seems more possible in this state, and I think it is. It’s possible to be a chameleon on this medicine and temporarily merge with and become someone or something else. 3M allows the ego to relax and expand in a transpersonal way, to the point that the ego approximates the Self or Atman* as understood by Hinduism. And we become vast and open and can know our True Self, our divine nature, more clearly. The results are similar to ego dissolution in some ways, but the route there is quite different, and it is beautiful and sweet. [Ātman is a Sanskrit word for the true or eternal Self or the self-existent essence of each individual, which persists across
multiple bodies and lifetimes—Wikipedia.]

Kratom                                                                                                                                                                   It has become quite popular. It is found in the leaf of a Southeast Asian tree. It is used in unprocessed ground-up opiate-containing leaves. The opiates in it cannot cause addiction or physical harm. Kratom has been widely used to help opiate addicts get off more dangerous drugs and as a treatment for pain relief. Netflix’s Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia series has an episode on it.                       I’ve tried it a couple of times. I started with a teaspoonful, or 2 g. Nothing much happened. Then I did 4 g, and that was sweet. I found myself grinning gently for the next couple of hours and was then very relaxed. I haven’t done it again. If my life was more difficult, I might do it more.                                                                       The DEA keeps threatening to make it illegal and then backs off after getting a solid response from the drug treatment community touting its usefulness.

Trance Drumming                                                                                                                                       While this isn’t a substance, it is a powerful way to alter one’s consciousness. Note: 9 Hz is a fascinating pulse. Robert Becker, MD, was both a clinician and researcher. In the early 1980s, he investigated healing using salamanders because they are good at regenerating severed limbs and even part of a heart. As described in his 1995 book, The Body Electric, he found that as the salamander regrew a limb, it generated a very weak 9-Hz DC field. When the limb was regrown, the field turned off.
He found that interesting. Coincidentally, he had a patient with a broken femur that wouldn’t heal. He’d been in a bed for 18 months. The next medical step would be to amputate the leg. You can’t walk around on a broken leg like that. He wondered if applying a 9-Hz field across the break might help. Since more is more, he applied a stronger field, but, alas, nothing happened. He reduced its amplitude, and when he got down to half a billionth of an amp or so, like in the salamander, the bone healed. Using DC fields to help jump-start healing has become a common medical procedure. I understand that different tissues respond best to different frequencies.
Another fascinating thing about the effect of drumming on us is that our bodies are mostly made up of what scientist and great guy James Oschman, PhD, named the living matrix. This material is piezoelectric, meaning that physical pressure on it generates electrical current. It’s how phonograph needles work. According to my audiophile friends, it is still the best technology for the purest presentation of the original live music.                                                                                                                   So, as the drum head is being hit, it generates sound waves, particularly strong on the lower frequency end. These pulsations then create waves of energy through the living matrix. I don’t know exactly what that does, but it sure does something.
A surprising trance drumming experience happened in a Malidoma Some workshop on creating rituals.  The lead drummer asked if I would help him during a ritual. He had me play a simple Da Da dadada over and over again while he improvised on top of it. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. The first hour was fine. During the second hour, I kept being afraid I would lose it. In the third hour, I felt solid and strong. Then, in the following and final half hour, I felt like I could soar forever.        That answered my question about how some cultures could go all night like the Jamaican Nyabinghi drummers can. Native American drumming is interesting because there are no complex rhythms, just a single beat or a two-part heartbeat on a frame drum. What happens that can get very trippy is the depth and richness of the overtones of multiple drums.
Sitting alone in my yard one day, I took a strong dose of psilocybin mushrooms and spent most of the following four hours sitting on a chair in my yard beating on my djembe drum. What happened wasn’t musical. It was far more than that. I found an incredible sweet spot, hitting the drum close to nine times a second. Not faster, not slower, just the sweet spot. I made it more magical by moving my hands around the head of the drum so the pitch moved around from higher to lower, round and round. It
was like having a direct connection to an intense spiritual energy.    It was so powerful. 9 Hz is about as fast as most people can tap their fingers on a tabletop or whatever. I must have hit the drum well over 100,000 times. It was quite the journey! I had no idea where it would go when I started.
The drumming I heard at the New Warrior retreat and a serendipitous connection led me to this fascinating area. Trance drumming is a fascinating collection of techniques for altering consciousness. While melody and harmony are relatively recent additions to the human mind, rhythm is as ancient as Homo sapiens and perhaps even older. The earliest melodic instrument archeologists have found is a 40,000-year-old bone flute. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to play it. It would be interesting to see how it was tuned.                                                                                                                                              Most drums, by the nature of their materials are not durable. I suspect that all indigenous cultures had percussion instruments. One of my favorite photos is from Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart’s Drumming at the Edge of Magic book. (I think) It showed maybe a dozen old Indian men holding drumsticks and sitting on either side of a large, hollow, horizontal log drum. I bet they rocked it! That book came out in 1991.It was perfect timing, as it so fit in with the rising interest in shamanism both in the men’s movement and the greater counterculture.
For a while, there was an active therapy movement utilizing drumming. It turned out that people with dementia could learn rhythms and very much enjoyed it. Remo Belli, the head of the Remo drum company, created drums and other percussion instruments this purpose. I wrote him a letter to which he responded that it was one of the most interesting letters he’d ever received. In it, I described the living matrix, the extremely complex and sensitive system of semi-conducting fibers embedded in a gelatinous material that surrounds and fills the body’s cells. It’s discussed in Chapter 4.                                 I told him that this material is piezoelectric, which means that any physical pressure on it produces an electrical current. I told him I believed that the dramatic effects of prolonged drumming on consciousness may be due to the repetitive stoking of the acupuncture and related tissues this way. The experience is additive.

Into the Future                                                                                                                                               Right now, things look excellent for psychedelic research and implementation. My only fear re a psychedelically-enriched future is that, given the way our nation’s politics have been moving
towards a democracy-denying fascistic Christian Nationalism, we could have a government that would find the whole psychedelic movement anathema and do everything it could to suppress it.

IBOGAINE EXPERIENCES

I1 Ibogaine Experience #1 

The following is my experience with Ibogaine. The statement “words cannot describe…” is an understatement.

I ingested the Ibogaine in the evening of December 1st, 1997. After 45 minutes the first wave hit. I had no nausea with the ibo coming on or through the entire journey. Then the second wave hit. The best way to describe the waves would be a freight train plowing through my energy field. During each wave there was an accompanying sound – something like thin fiberglass rods coming out of my ears that were whirling around just below the speed of sound. The second wave backed off. I then was in blackness and I could see my body laying in my bed as I floated away from it up to the ceiling. I passed through the ceiling into the night sky. I could feel myself going further up to the stars then slowly descending through some trees I had never seen before. When I touched down on land I realized I was in Africa. I then felt my skull split open and hinged back. I looked up into the African night and saw two giant black hands pouring what looked like sand into my brain. It was shimmering down all around me and I realized it was the Ibogaine being poured into my brain. As the ibogaine hit my brain I could feel/hear/see my brain lighting up like a switch board. I was then back in my bed. The Ibo was seeming to say “Are you ready?” I was. The final wave was quite intense. . . After the third wave I felt as if my whole body was being violently shaken. I then had my whole body lifted off the bed by the ibo and swung from side to side in a 300 degree arc. It wasn’t frightening. My sense was the Ibogaine was showing me its power. It was powerful!!!

I was then laid back down. I heard a voice say, “Here are some of the things we can do. Do you want to see what your niece will look like at 27?” I replied, “Yes.” A three dimensional image of her flashed up and then I saw her morph from 13 to 27. Then they did the same thing with another person taking them from age 50 to 6. I was told this is only a small example of what was capable. I started shaking/vibrating violently (it felt that way at least). The whirring sound got louder and louder. I started shaking more violently. Then my stomach was blown wide open and brilliant red 20 foot flames started spewing out. It was very intense but there was no fear with the experience. Out of the flames rose a HUGE red man. I realized this was my repressed male red energy – and he was angry…. He had his fists in the air and was swaying back and forth pounding his fists. He was also yelling. While he was still doing this the red flames changed to blue light/smoke that was spewing forth all around the Red Energy Man. I realized this was all the grief and sadness that I had stored for 34 years.

Everything went still. I then saw to my right an African man with white hair and a beard and wearing a loincloth. I walked over to him. I heard Bwiti (the Ibogaine spirit) say “This is your guide.” I asked Bwiti if I could ask the man his name. I was told I could. The man said “Moka.” I laughed! I told Bwiti I could not have a guide named “Mocha,” that was coffee… As soon as I said that two words flashed up “rebellion” and “self importance”. Then Bwiti got EXTREMELY angry and yelled, “HIS NAME IS MOKA!!!!! M-O-K-A!!!! MOKA!!!!” I apologized. Moka told me that I was now in the second phase of my process. He explained, “We had to remove all your repressed emotions so we could teach you these new things. The key is to not allow yourself to store so many emotions. What is important is to speak in the moment so every emotion moves as it happens. A person should look like this.” I then saw the image of a women walking with a rainbow streaming out of her body. Each color representing an emotion. There were slight “hills and valleys” to the rainbow. Moka explained, “Emotions need to be fluid, a cry should come as easy as a laugh. Some people in your life abuse their emotions by holding them and expressing them later. They need to live in the now.”

Tangent

I’m not sure of the exact timing of this but at some point the Ibogaine seemed to have wore off a bit. I was laying in bed thinking, “This is it? $2000.00 dollars for this? This sucks!!! Ibogaine sucks!” Then the word “trust” popped up. I thought “O.K. – trust…trust the experience” The word “listen” popped up. I listened. Two seconds later I could here the phone ring in the next room. This was the proof I was looking for… Bwiti said listen and then the phone rang. At that moment I had a bodily felt reference and total understanding of shamanism/plant allies/the spirit world and the true power of Ibogaine. (Conveying all the details and magic with words is difficult.)

Also at this time I was standing with Moka when Bwiti interrupted us and said “Look!” Suddenly to my right was the Earth. It was about the size of a large beach ball. Bwiti seemed to be holding the Earth and literally pushing it right into my face. I then saw a large bulldozer come over the top of the Earth tearing the Earth in half. As this was happening I could hear the Earth screaming, “HELP ME!!! PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!” I was then pushed/shoved to a desk where a blank book was. Bwiti informed me that I was to write a book called “How to Save the Earth – A Manifesto for Change”. A pen was in my hand and I started writing down what Moka was saying. The first line was, “Our Earth is dying.” There was other dialog that I cannot remember. I seemed to just get started and I was told Phase Two was beginning.

Phase Two: Conditioning Awareness Program

Phase two consisted of 100’s of scenarios where I was put into a past situation or a “made-up” one. These events were all done symbolically. For example: I realized what I was learning was about choice. A week before my journey the word choice kept popping into my head. I then had the thought this has come…ahhh….ahhh… I then looked down and there was a dog running around a concrete ring on the side of a hill… the phrase “Full Circle” flashed in front of me. It was as if a special way of teaching had been developed specifically for my being. As I would walk through each scenario I had to make different decisions. If the thought was incorrect a sign would flash up with a word describing my thought/action. The three main words I kept encountering were trust, rebellion and the phrase “the need to please.” Others were: lie, co-dependence, distraction, fear and several I can’t remember. It was like I was walking down a maze. Wrong thought go the other way… until you reach “the truth.” Through this whole phase Moka was walking with me.

Phase three: Question and Answer Period

I was then asked by Moka if I had any questions for him. I did. I asked about emotions. I told him I need to go further into my emotions. He reminded me that all past emotions had been removed from me. I then asked what about my parents. I know there has to still be a lot of energy left around them. Moka then walked me out to the edge of a giant plateau. We were at the very edge. In the distance were five grey cubes suspended by a cable that stretched to the sky. On each cube was a very faint black and white image of a family member. Moka said, “There is your family, do you feel anything?” I didn’t. No anger. No co-dependence. No energy hooks into the past. Moka then told me that my emotional healing was going to take place after the Ibo journey and that my mate was to be my guide. Also that this emotional healing would be dealing with emotions in the “now,” not the past. I was also informed that I would need to “relearn what love is.” I was informed that this could be taught with the Ibo but my task was to learn it on my own.                                                                               What followed was an hour or so of Q & A. I would ask a question and I would get an answer either in the form of a written or verbal message or in a scenario. For example: I asked the question, “What is the nature of core healing?” I then found myself falling face first through the sky, through trees and as I was ready to smash into the dirt I stopped. The word “earth” appeared in the dirt. The nature of core healing for me was more earth connection. I asked questions about career, relationships, future children (which I was shown), and explanations of the fantasy bond and aspect identification. Several of my questions were around concepts that I had been using prior to the Ibogaine for my own healing. Concepts that I understood but did not totally grasp. The Ibogaine allowed me to assimilate these concepts in every cell of my body. Once again the Ibogaine seems to develop a specific form of teaching that allows the user to understand things on a whole new level. Ibogaine has the gift of pure insight.

Phase Three: Redoing the Past

I eventually ran out of questions…… there was a period of “nothingness.” I remember someone coming in to check in on me and me telling them, “I think it’s beginning to wear off.” The minute I said that I was slammed by the Ibogaine. “Never mind,” I said.   I found myself in a huge field. In the field were various mounds of dirt. I was to discover that each mound of dirt was a past event that I had not fully dealt with. So I spent the next several hours going from mound to mound redoing my past. I would walk up to a mound, put my hand on it and a specific scenario would open up. I then got the insight of what created each event and that I was responsible for the choice I made in that moment. I also had the opportunity to rechoose each decision or thought process.

I asked Moka why I had to go through these past experience if there were no longer any emotions tied to them. I was told that it was part of my retraining and to gain wisdom.  Towards the end of this experience I saw myself as a 6 year old boy with a small wagon behind me. On the wagon was a grey cube similar to the ones I saw earlier as my family. There was no top to the cube and inside the cube it was empty. The wagon and cube then turned to a charcoal shell. Suddenly I saw what seemed to be the hand of Bwiti and it crushed the wagon and cube. This cube represented the emotional baggage of my life that I had been hauling around for the past 34 years. When Bwiti crushed it I felt a wave of sadness and loneliness, I had just lost a part of myself that I knew quite well. This was followed by a great sense of freedom from the past.

What followed was a series of what I call “whumpings”. The first was my Mother.The image of her giving birth to me appeared. She was in a delivery room with her legs in stirrups. I had just “arrived”. I could see my placenta hanging out of her. Bwiti’s hand came down and scooped me up. My Mother turned to charcoal, then a hand came down and “whumped” her turning her to black dust. All my past girlfriends then appeared in charcoal form and were “whumped”. Bwiti got to one girlfriend that he could not crush. He tried again. Nothing happened. I felt myself pushed towards her. There were some unresolved issues with her that had not been dealt with. I worked them out, saw how I had energy hooks still in her cleared these, and then she got “whumped”.

In writing this now it seems rather heartless and sadistic to have your Mother and old girlfriends “crushed”. But I see this process as a total completion to the past. I no longer feel the co-dependence with these women.

Insights Gained

To say I gained a thousand new insights would not be an exaggeration. My life has been forever changed. The strongest message for me was to “slow down!” I also learned of all the tricks/techniques/distraction I have developed to avoid feelings. And how I have been addicted to feeling bad about myself and sabotaging my own life. The fact that I create my own reality now has a new depth to it. The Ibogaine showed me who I am at my very core without any conditioning, tied up emotions or energy – my true essence. It gave me an extended glimpse of what’s possible as a self-actualized human. It then also gave me the tools and training to achieve this pureness. Ibogaine is not a means to an end. After the experience you are not “fixed.” It is up to me to make the choices, to use the tools.

Twenty Days Later

During my Ibogaine experience I was given a chance to see myself at my true essence. Since the journey I have deviated from that true essence- but not far. The insights gained are still there. Unfortunately so is all of my conditioning/head trips. But what I have now is a better form of dealing with these. My life has also slowed down. I find I cannot rev like I use to. I can’t do 6 things at once staying in a state of perpetual distraction. The phrase, “Be Here Now” pops up frequently. I am looking into a major career change out of corporate America into some type of counseling/guide work. My relationship with my fiance has taken a quantum leap of truth and love. This has been the greatest gift of the Ibogaine. I am relearning what love is.

Tips for Use

Do not eat for 12 hours prior to the ingestion of the Ibogaine. Do not drink water for at least 5 hours prior. There is a component of the Ibogaine that does not want you to get out of bed (or even move!). To get up to urinate would be extremely difficult for the first 6-8 hours. Your body feels like it weighs about 900 pounds. Also movement = body spins. I made the mistake of rolling on to my side which produced 10 minutes of the most intense bed spins of my life! So once the Ibogaine kicks in – Do Not Move!!! I would also recommend keeping noise to a minimum. My hearing was turned up to the level where I could here a pin drop five miles away. You hear EVERYTHING. So if you have friends staying with you silence is the rule. As far as being guided through the journey I feel it is best to allow the Ibogaine to do that. Keep all interruptions to a minimum.

The hallucinatory component of the Ibogaine lasted approximately 30 hours for me. They seem to come and go. One minute you can be in conversation with someone and five minutes later you are seeing jeweled boxes and binary coding coming out of the ceiling. The hallucinations are extremely real!!! What I was seeing with my eyes closed I could see if my eyes were open.

The physical aspect of the Ibogaine lasted approximately 20 hours +. It has a VERY slow taper effect. At no time did I feel ill or that I had ingested anything toxic into my body. The Ibogaine felt extremely pure in my body.

Final Note

What happened to me was obviously my experience. In conversation with other friends who have done Ibogaine each experience was unique. Some friends had little to no hallucinations. One friend got extremely nauseous. The variety of experience is equivalent to the variety of personalities. Whatever happens to you is your experience- custom designed for what you need.

Ibogaine Experience 2

The true, accurate, and unabridged story of my ibogaine journey.About 5 years ago, I learned of a drug called ibogaine, which had cured the heroin addiction of someone I believed to be an incurable and unrepentant addict.   While the relief of addiction in itself was incredible, I found myself intrigued by the implications this could potentially have for other forms of self-discovery and healing.   I was not a substance addict, but I was captivated by other parts in the accounts I read… the descriptions of experiences of rebirth, enlightenment, insight, inspiration, the laying down of a lifetime of burdens.   For a lifetime I have struggled with a lack of spiritual or emotional groundedness, and something about this medicine spoke to me.   “Ten years of therapy in one night”, they wrote.    In spite of the unlikely promise, I was interested.

Nonetheless I was hesitant… after all, this substance is illicit in the US, people had died from improper supervision or administration.   For even the most bare-bones providers, the expense for treatment and travel were not trivial.  Also, ibogaine is a potent psychedelic, something of which I had next to no experience.  I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t just scramble my brains and leave me a drooling vegetable in a hotel room while some shady fly-by-night provider deposited the treatment fee.   However, as time went on, it became more obvious to me that continuing with this emptiness was not an option… if I did not deal with it, I would either become something quite ugly, or seek death.   I chose to act, and I selected the Iboga Therapy House in Vancouver.

When I arrived at the house, I was nervous, anxious, and didn’t know what to think.   It was a warm, homey, welcoming house decorated in subdued, earth-toned colors and tribal artifacts.   It certainly didn’t look like the kind of place where you’d blow open your skull with potent African psychoactives.   It was about 8 PM… I was told I’d have to wait 4 more hours, without food, no less.  Frankly, I had built up 5 years of anticipation and was desperately craving relief for a lifetime of pain.   I wanted the treatment immediately, but I suppressed the urge to make a scene.  Since the attendants radiated knowledge, confidence, experience, caring, and professionalism, I submitted to trusting the process.

They conducted a brief purification ritual they called “smudging” in which they burned sage and wafted it about me about with a white feather.  Quite frankly I thought this was hokum, and I suppressed a chuckle or two.   But I felt that if they were in this process with me, and this was important to them, then I’d respect their beliefs.   (Little did I know how my own beliefs would change over the next 48 hours).   We talked briefly about what to expect in the experience, and then I took a 100mg test dose.   I was so excited to finally receive some part of the drug that I tried desperately to feel something, but I got nothing.

About 2 hours passed, and still nothing from the test dose.   This was good, they said; it meant I wasn’t allergic.   At about midnight, I was given what they told me was 1290 milligrams… on top of the 100mg test dose, this was 15 milligrams per kilogram of ibogaine per kilogram.   It was presented to me as six white capsules lined up side by side in a small black box, appearing to me like a bleached  bones in an ossuary. I felt like I was being handed my own death, and I suddenly felt afraid.   I balked, wondering how I could stall for time.   But I also felt something driving me from the inside… I had arrived at the end of a road that spanned 5 years, 3000 miles, $3000, 6 hours of fasting, and many hours of deliberation and soul-seeking.   The time for hesitation had long passed.

I swallowed all 6 of the capsules.   After feeling nothing for about 60 seconds, I began to feel relaxed.  I’d found in the past that I was often resistant to new substance, noticing none of the expected effects.  Perhaps I wouldn’t have to do this difficult journey after all.   I relaxed and chatted with Sandra for a bit.  Then, after about 45 minutes, it suddenly became startlingly clear that there would be no resistance to this substance.

The first thing I noticed was that the wood-panel ceiling, arranged in horizontal parquets, started shimmering and almost breathing.   This wasn’t too unusual; anyone in a sober state can achieve the same effect by staring at any patterned surface until ocular fatigue sets in… the patterns will begin to shimmer, trail, and flow.   I dismissed this effect as the wishful thinking that occurs as one anticipates an altered state that never quite arrives.   Next, square patches of colored patterns seemed to crawl and settle on the ceiling, like living kaleidoscopic tiles, until the entire ceiling was decorated.   Still, just a derivative of the existing surroundings… not so impressive.   Then, the ceiling suddenly took on the appearance of a pool of water, lit from the inside with pink light.  Drops of water were striking the surface and creating ripples that spread gracefully across the entire ceiling.   Ibogaine now had my complete and undivided attention, and this was probably the most exciting moment of my life.   Nonetheless I was still in the real world… I could see objects and people in the room.   I recall someone suggesting I close my eyes and “get into it”.

At this point I began to lose track of time and reality.  Although I did want to “get into it”, I also wanted to hold onto reality as a reference point understand the depth of the experience, and hopefully also to hang some memories on.  After going through so much to get here, I wanted to have a little something to take back with me.   But on the other hand, the closed-eye visuals were compelling, so eventually I decided I would leave my eyes closed and get into the visions.

Chaos was all around me.  Fluorescent green spheres shot from behind me to a point in the distance in front of me.  I saw green laser-like lines dancing in my headspace.    I got the sensation that I was at the end of a long movie theatre, with 4 screens at the end.   On these screens I saw very simple geometric patterns of various shades of black and blue… aqua, turquoise, teal, robin’s egg.   Mostly they were square and diamond patterns but there were rounded ones too.   They reminded me of “First Breath” by Vibrata Chromodoris as well as some more Dave Hunter’s blue-dominated work.   And these just kept periodically flipping, just like background decorations.   I felt that these visions represented the iboga spirit that was constantly in control… much as if it was supplying me with visions to distract me while it performed the heavier work behind the scenes.

While the ibogaine wallpaper was working at the end of the theatre, there was so much going on in the foreground that unfortunately I can’t remember it all.   I do remember that it was dazzling.   I remember seeing I remember having the impression of a large greenish bag-like organ floating in my right field of vision, with a long appendage stretching out and connecting to my temporal lobe.   It pulsed and constricted; I got the impression that this was the Broca’s area of my brain; the language center.   It was squeezing words into my brain and processing the sounds that were entering my hears.  Suddenly, the appendage became detached and spraying words into space.   Uh oh.  Can’t be good.   I had lost language; I started hearing gibberish and speaking gibberish as well.

Suddenly I lost myself entirely.  The boundaries of my internal vision field disappeared, the boundaries even of my own ego disappeared.   I lost the ability to do anything except see that I was floating in a green miasma, and I had no name, no language, no identity, and no idea where I’d even come from.   It was frightening.   At this point I knew for certain that this wasn’t a game; something powerful had hold of me.   My ego was disintegrating, I could visually see the pieces flying outward at every angle.   All I could think was “please pull it back together” (without words, of course, because I’d lost my language).   Fortunately, with ibogaine, one can generally re-integrate with reality just by opening the eyes, which I did.   I now regret fleeing this ego-dissolved state, as I probably missed visiting some very interesting places.   Nonetheless as a tender, inexperienced psychonaut I had an abiding fear of losing it altogether.   Next time I’ll be a little more courageous.

After coming “back” to myself, I found that I no longer saw my Broca’s area anywhere.   Instead, all of my words were lying in a heap of fluorescent blue Scrabble pieces at a recess in the bottom of my headspace in sort of a volcanic mound.   Controlling my speech or forming words was difficult.   Periodically the mound would erupt, propelling words upward into my headspace.   I wanted to communicate but I absolutely could not assemble sentences… all I could do was pronounce whatever words I saw as they floated by.   “Foot.”  “Pigeon.”  Okay, we’ll go with that.   “Hey everybody, foot pigeon.”

Next was the chakra tree.   I call it the chakra tree because it closely resembled Dave Hunter’s artwork of the same name.   First, I had a realistic vision of myself and the treatment facilitators sitting in a wooded clearing by an obelisk-shaped reservoir of magenta-colored liquid which I took to be ibogaine.  (In my visions, the ibogaine substance figured prominently, and was symbolically assigned the color magenta).    From the reservoir, there was an intravenous hooked into my arm.  My facilitators were looking at me with a mixture of resolve and amusement as if to say… “Here it comes… you don’t even know what’s coming, but you’re about to find out…”  And as I watched it gushing through the tube through my arm, I thought…. Wait, no, I’m not ready, that’s too much, just give me another minute to prepare.   But it all hit me and flowed into my arm through the hot-pink tube.   Then something interesting happened… another magenta IV tube sprouted from my arm and attached itself to the earth, and suddenly I saw the earth become a huge network of blood capillaries which filled with ibogaine.   Oops.   I sensed that I had just dosed the entire earth with ibogaine.   Oh no… I didn’t mean to do that.   Well, the earth looked like it needed it, so maybe it wasn’t a bad thing,

At this point, I returned to the visions, and this was when I really took flight in them.   Suddenly I had the sensation of being propelled upward at a dizzying speed through the blackness in a blue-ringed tube.  I was being pushed upward by the first flood of ibogaine.   I reached the top of the chakra tree and found myself in a silver basin containing boiling pink and blue foam.   The ibogaine was jumping and dancing across the surface in magenta arcs.   The whole basin started rumbling and shaking as if in an earthquake, and the arcs intensified.    I had the feeling of my facilitators confirming to me “This is it, this is the core iboga vision… you’re seeing what we all saw, this is what you came to see.   Release yourself to it, go with it, be initiated and be reborn.”  Then I felt a huge pressure under me, and I felt blasted out the top as if from a giant pyrotechnics mortar.   I felt as if I’d been splattered all over the ceiling of the universe, and I lost myself for a few minutes again.

My sensation at this point was that I had journeyed to the deepest part of the experience.   I was in complete blackness, except for an upwelling fountain of purple mist which was holding me up with its gentle upward pressure.   I sensed I was communing with an ancient and powerful spirit.   It was communicating that I had arrived at the central mandatory part of the experience.   It expressed that everyone who takes ibogaine must come to this place, that doing so is the ultimate purpose of life, and that the entire purpose of the universe was to bring us to this place.   I was perfused with a deep sense of interconnectedness of all things, and this helped me perceive the truth of what I was being told.   I saw the formation of the first hydrogen atoms in the universe in the nanoseconds after the big bang and the formation of the stars connected to all the events and people in my life for the purpose of bringing me to this moment.   I can say honestly and without a trace of irony that this particular awakening represents the most important part of my life.   I can’t see how anything before or after could ever approach it.

At various points my reverie was interrupted by baseline checks from the facilitators, which momentary brought me back into the room.   I have impressions of what was happening in the “real” world at that time; I know now that some were real and some weren’t.   I saw Sandra’s face covered by a translucent mask, covering her mouth and making it very difficult to understand her.   At various times I felt as if six facilitators were in the room; I know now there were never more than three plus myself.   At one point in the night I felt I was being monitored only by an African girl in her late teens; I now realize this didn’t happen.   I was conscious of my facilitators writing things down, which was true… but I also perceived that they were repeating my every utterance to reassure to me that they were giving me the utmost attention… if I coughed, or said “uh”, I heard someone say… “Ok, that was a cough… that was an ‘uh’”.   (I’ve since been told this did not occur).   At one point later in the night, I found it completely impossible to vocalize or communicate… I was too tired and dehydrated.   I felt I was letting down my facilitators as they had asked me to vocalize as much as possible.   At point I believed I heard someone directly over me say “…he hasn’t said a single word?”  I was later told that nobody said this, and in fact I was vocalizing quite a bit.   I believed I had urinated in the bed and heard someone said “does he know?”   Later I determined that neither of those things occurred.   All these trivial observations serve nothing except to demonstrate that my perception of reality was definitely distorted, and that trying to hold onto my immediate reality was largely useless and distracting… a mistake I won’t make next time, should I go through this again.

After I settled, the next phase came, in which I saw photo-like images.   I began to get pictures of various people and events in my life, overlaid on top of the iboga screens at the end of the theatre.   These were often vague, fuzzy, and nonsensical, and I don’t remember much about them.   I was manipulating them like windows on a computer screen, using my hands, and then I recall a facilitator telling me: “you don’t need to use your hands, try manipulating them with your mind.”   I found that I could, just by wrinkling my nose like Barbara Eden in “I Dream of Jeannie.”   But I never could really get a good picture.   I found that the pictures of things I thought were difficult or maybe intense, I wasn’t able to open.   I couldn’t get into death, my thoughts of suicide, or pictures of certain people close to me.  Those windows were simply unavailable.   Not being able to get into the pictures, I gave up on them.

Next, I got landscapes.   These were interesting.   I got images of geological features and ruins… of the great pyramids at Giza, the Parthenon in yellow, Bryce Canyon, the Sphinx in red. Angkor Wat in blue.  I tried to enter these pictures and I had a little success… I was able to walk through the pyramids briefly.   But this didn’t last….  the last of the visions faded away as the sun rose.

After 6 grueling hours, I was exhausted.   If I’ve made the visionary phase sound like a fun, trippy lightshow… well, there was a lot more to it than that.   Physically, it was extremely difficult.   I had vomited a couple of times, my throat was parched dry because I was mouth-breathing the whole time, I had been coughing heavily.  At one point I felt as if I was either breathing improperly or not enough, and I struggled to get enough breath into my body (which I now believe was an illusion; nobody reported any undue distress on my part).   At the end of it, I felt like I had been hit by a truck.

Worst of all, I was woefully sad.   Sure, I’d been to another place and seen interesting things, as I’d hoped… but most of all I’d expected to work through issues in my life and gain spiritual and psychological  insight, and I felt none whatsoever.   I felt that my last hope of self-help had turned out to be a sham and that I’d wasted a large sum of money.   I wanted to cry, but I was too exhausted.   I just sat there as the sun began to rise, trying to pull myself together.   However I’d overlooked something important.   In my research, I had entirely overlooked the fact that ibogaine comes in 2 phases… the visionary phase, and the introspective phase.   In my research, mostly I’d always been interested in the visionary phase and glossed over the introspective phase.  So I really was not expecting the wonderful experience that followed.   In my head I began talking to myself… I said “This has been a waste of time, I feel exhausted and miserable, I just want it all over.”   And then something odd happened… though I was alone in the room, I heard an answer back, clear as a bell… “Just give it 10 more minutes”.

Ordinarily, this would have startled me.   But by this point, having just been through 6 hours of visions in which my brain was splattered across the ceiling of the universe, nothing could have surprised me at this point.   So I started playing around with this inner voice, asking questions.    Am I going to be OK?    The answer came back…. “Yes, you’re going to be OK.”   It was unmistakable.   I knew the voice was coming from inside me, but it was authoritative, confident, and unbiased.   Somehow the “questioning me” was separate from the “answering me”.    Fascinated now, I continued asking questions:

Have I wasted my money on this endeavor?   “No.”

How can I heal myself?   “First, eliminate all unopposed negative language in the present and future tense, except for the phrase ‘don’t have to.’   You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.   Replace ‘have to’ with ‘want to’.   If you have an obligation, make sure you identify who the obligation is toward.   If the obligation isn’t to a person, then you don’t have to do it… from now on, you only do things for people, not for things or concepts.  And you treat everyone with love and respect.

Are you serious?   Take no prisoners.

I don’t understand what you mean.   When you create strife with someone, you lock them into conflict with you, as if you had locked both of you in a prison cell.   Take no prisoners.

How can I be happy in life?  “Be true to yourself and help others the way you’ve always tried.”

This was real progress; I was getting excited now.   I barraged myself with questions, each time getting a useful answer.  I should have been writing all this down and I wish I had, but I thought I’d have no trouble remembering it.    For the next 18 hours I paced around the house, curling up on sofas and beds, constantly whispering questions to myself and whispering answers back.   All the answers made me smile; some of them made me giggle and laugh out loud.  All of them were important and useful tools for building healthy, happy thoughts, permanently.   During this period I never felt tired or hungry but I forced myself to drink juice because I knew my body needed nourishment.   I engaged in conversations with facilitators at times, but the internal dialogue was so compelling that I wasn’t much interested in talking to others.

At about midnight, 24 hours after I was launched on my experience, the reflective phase was fading away, and I reached a place of pure raw emotion, of the deepest possible joy and gratitude.    I was still reflecting, but no longer actively engaging my internal other.   I found myself still not sleepy or hungry.   For a while I simply lay on the bed.   Alone, I reflected deeply on this wonderful gift I had been given.   At times, I laughed at my past self, so serious and hubristic.   At times, I wept in relief that my darkness was unbelievably, finally, undoubtedly over.   I tried to plumb the deepest wells of gratitude in my soul to express thanks for what had happened to me.   Mostly, I began to think backward in my life to understand how I had come to such a place of darkness in my life.    It began coming together in my own mind as a symbolic narrative of my own internal struggles, and at about 2AM I felt guided to write down.   For the next 3 hours I wrote like a fiend, churning out an allegorical story of my life, chronicling how my intellectual self had separated from my emotional self early in life, and the resulting consequences.   That document is the most important product of the experience, and without it, I’m not sure I would have brought home the same lessons or progress.   I am a bit abashed to recall I foisted this piece of highly personal, exuberant juvenilia on all my facilitators, and I’m humbled by the support that they gave it.

At about 6AM I decided take a walk.   At this point, my physical condition can only be described as magical.  I felt so light that I had the sensation that my body was evaporating.   Down by the seaside, I watched the sun rise, and it was glorious.   I got lost on my way back to the house and wandered around for a bit, having some friendly interactions with a few strangers and a dog, getting a couple of good-natured lectures about wandering away from a house without having the address or the phone number.   I found the house again at about 10AM.

At this point, I would say that I had entirely returned to consensus reality, and the heavily committed portion of my journey was officially over at about the 34^th hour.   Though I hadn’t eaten or slept in almost 2 days, I wasn’t hungry or tired.  I felt exuberantly happy, I was in a state of indefatigable optimism, I saw only the best in every interaction with every person, I saw all around me nothing but the pure beauty of creation, and thankful for every moment in it.   This state persisted for about 90 days, and the residue of it is still resonating inside me, constantly changing my life in small ways each day.

Ibogaine Experience 3 

I had the image of a long house, or a smoke house of which natives sit in for a vision quest.  The long house extended into a deep green forest.  The leaves of which became my bronchiole and lungs.  The fire at the opening of the house burned up into my mind, sparking and lighting its darkest recesses.  For the long cabin had become my spine.

Three Bwiti surrounded my bed, to my left was a man wearing a wooden black mask, on my right side stood another masked tribesman, while at the foot of the bed was the man in charge.  This man scowled at me and my smugness for thinking I hadn’t taken enough Iboga.  They waited for me to leap out of my body and fly away into the sky over Vancouver Canada with them, which I did.

Taking me up above Canada they showed me how to travel the inner skies.  Being far from home I flew back to Ontario visiting friends and family.  Stopping at my sister’s house, (Whom I haven’t seen in about 16 years) I was told to leave this house alone.

Finding myself back in the therapy house I was saddened and heavy.  A brief moment of breathing and the three masked Bwiti returned.  As they looked upon me other men arrived, and pushed in to get a glimpse.  Then suddenly the entire therapy house filled up with Bwiti.  I watched my facilitator’s spirit body rise out of herself as she was sitting on the couch to meet a beautiful leader, with a head of short dark curls.  They seemed as old friends.

My first visions had the hue of rusty orange, and desert rock brown, yet as the experienced progressed and the intensity increased, the colors which I saw changed.  These new vibrations could be described as green, pink, and blue.  I also saw white, however the white was more like a bright invisible, translucency.

I am an avid lucid dreamer and astral projector, and have been so for a decade.  My out of body experiences before Iboga have shown me that various colors and the speed of their vibrancy are a good determination as to the level of astral plane which you may be on.  Low levels have colors that are slow and dark such as browns and reds, you will rarely if ever see a color like pink on the low astral levels. Such as the ones the dead walk on.

I believe Iboga brings you into, and through the land of the dead, to the land of the Gods by traversing you through the low astral, right through into the higher astral and even the mental and spiritual bodies.  Further experimentation would be beneficial regarding the dosage requirements for these travels.

Clairaudience was common as was spirit communication.

During the experience I incorporated the use of various crystals such as clear quartz, phantom quartz, smoky quartz, amethyst, amber, and apophyllite.  I used them both for protection and to store the mental and emotional memories of the experience.  It is likely that the crystals facilitated in some of the higher psychic experiences.  However, I believe this to be the case in terms of protection of the energy field(s) from harmful psychic attacks or encounters, which are often encountered in the use of shamanic plants.  There was a period during my trip, which I would describe as a pull between demonic, and higher spiritual communication.   Possibly my own higher and lower natures.

This is not to say that I only saw scary, violent, and sad things.  I felt a great deal of bliss and thankfulness for the depth and benefits of the journey.

Carlos Castaneda, in his The Teachings of Don Juan, speaks of the necessity of the warrior to recapitulate his personal history so that he can become acquainted with the actuality of freedom.  It is my firmest belief that Iboga can be used for this purpose.  Iboga brought me in touch with both personal problems of my own which require inner work, it also brought me in touch with family issues.  While on a larger scale, I received visions regarding the community and society.

Another example of a dream symbol occurring shortly after the experience was of me wearing pure, clean, white shoes.  Sure, perhaps I’ll buy new shoes, but the image is one of direction, and cleanliness.

My dreams also continued to reiterate some of what I learned during the Iboga trip.  They also reinforced and validated the purification of my mind, and the healing which is associated with the “breaking open of the head.”

 

Three days after the experience my body feels light and buoyant.  I feel more as energy than body.  And when I wake up from dreaming in the morning, and in the evenings after the sun has set, I am still able to see my energy body very clearly in the form of very vibrant rainbow white “trails”.

Dreams, and the practice of lucid dreaming forges the energy body.  Lucid dreaming is a method by which one is able to achieve astral projection, as well as various psychic and trance states.  I am suspecting that the early morning, and evening appearance of “trails” is due to the further strengthening of my energy body due to the Iboga.  Quite possibly the Iboga has raised my vibration to a new level.  It has certainly increased my perception and strengthened my spirit.