' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
Psychedelics, according to me, are a class of drugs that distort visual perceptions. They show reality in a way that the normal mind, with its filters in place, tends to push to the background to enable a person to perform the basic functions of day-to-day survival. Under the influence of psychedelics, the mind frees itself from its filters, and one gets to see everything in all its glory. Many of the common psychedelic experiences that have been documented talk about a compression of the evolution of the universe into a matter of a few minutes. This is the equivalent of a person in the last dying moments seeing all the life that has transpired flashing before the mind in a movie in fast forward. One gets to see the universe, emerging from the void, the creation of the earth, the beginning of life of earth, the transition of life from single cellular organisms to multicellular organisms, the emergence of humans, and on till the disappearance of the universe back into the void. Some psychedelics are said to give one an experience of the other world, the world of the dead and the spirits, that remain hidden behind the veil that our living minds have created. Other psychedelic experiences talk about the key bonds and relationships between the user and the people in the user's life, often seen through intimate details that reaffirm, heal or strengthen the bonds that existed. Many of these are to do with loved ones that have passed away, often through traumatic experiences. Some psychedelic experiences involve seeing nature in a way that one has never seen it before - radiant, blindingly colorful, mystical, wondrous, and magnificent. Almost all psychedelic experiences leave the user profoundly affected. Many are reduced to tears, and usually these tears are tears of joy.
It is for these reasons that psychedelics are now considered, by the urban man, potent healers of the human mind. It is said that just one psychedelic experience is sufficient to heal persons suffering from various kinds of psychological disorders. I attribute this ability of psychedelics to heal the mind to the process of re-mapping the mind's perception of reality. When one goes through various trauma in life, these experiences leave an indelible mark on the mind's map of reality. The picture that the mind tends to hold is one of a dark, grey, bleak, painful landscape of reality that brings with it pain and sorrow, pushing one gradually into a state of melancholy depression and a view of the world as dark, constricting, and suffocating. The use of a psychedelic erases this dark picture, and repaints the mind's map of reality in all its wondrous color and beauty. It is a reboot of the mind stuck in an endless loop of dreariness, so that the mind is vibrant, joyous and alive once again. The power of the psychedelic is such that once this map of reality is repainted, seldom does the individual revert back to the dark, gloomy states that once drove her to despair. The individual's mind retains a memory of this reboot, and goes back to it again and again, like an underwater mammal going to the surface for oxygen. That is why it is often stated that just one dose of a psychedelic is enough to permanently heal almost any kind of mental disorder. It is the act of being reborn, becoming the twice-born that many ritualistic, and sham processes practiced by religious orders created for the exploitation of the vulnerable claim to achieve.
Humans have been blessed to have discovered and been able to enjoy the use of psychedelics for thousands of years. I am of the firm belief that it is the use of psychedelics that set the human on a trajectory that separated the species from the apes and the chimpanzees. The evolution of the human mind to what it is now I largely attribute to the use of psychedelics.
There are numerous natural psychedelics that have been used for thousands of years. Some of the most well-known ones are psilocybin, peyote, ayahuasca, ibogaine. Psilocybin is a mushroom, peyote is a cactus, ayahuasca is a combination of two plants - stems of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub. Ibogaine is from the roots of Tabernanthe Iboga, a shrub indigenous to West Africa. Besides these, there are more dangerous natural psychedelics such as Jimson's weed or datura.
In terms of synthetic psychedelics, the compound lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) probably takes the number one spot. Others claim seats at the table of psychedelics, newer substances like MDMA.
All psychedelics seem to have one key criterion for their effectiveness in producing the desired states of mind. That is the setting in which they are consumed. In all the cases, be it natural or synthetic psychedelics, it is of paramount importance that they are consumed in as natural a setting as possible. This is because all these psychedelics do one most important function as a part of their healing, and that is reconnect the human mind, lost in the labyrinth of human-made hell, back to nature. It is essentially a dose of nature that the human mind gets through the psychedelic that heals it. Maybe, with the synthetic psychedelics created in the laboratories of man, this natural setting is not of paramount important. But with the natural psychedelics, I would say that it is the number one criterion required to feel its full effect. That is why most experienced users of psychedelics, primarily the indigenous communities that practiced its use for thousands of years, used it for healing in their natural surroundings. The problems arose when modern urban man, with his mind disconnected from nature and living in man-made hell, went out and brought back these psychedelics to his urban hell. There are numerous instances where the use of the natural psychedelic in an inappropriate urban setting, in order to amplify the pleasures of the synthetic setting that man had placed himself in, resulted in hellish experiences as the mind sought to make a connection with its synthetic surroundings, only to create nightmarish experiences for the user. This led to the conclusion by the misdirected man that the psychedelic was harmful and dangerous. The foolish urban human then decided to prohibit all psychedelics, natural and synthetic, taking it out of the hands of the indigenous communities that viewed the natural psychedelics as sacred pathways for their communion with the eternal spirit that they were themselves a part of. All natural psychedelics are considered to be entheogens by the indigenous communities that use them.
Psilocybin, MDMA and LSD are said to be serotonergic hallucinogens with their primary mechanism of action is on serotonin receptors in the brain. Cocaine and amphetamine act on the dopamine receptors. Opioids act on the mu and sigma receptors. Alcohol acts on the GABA A and NMDA glutamate receptors. Cannabis acts on the CBR1 and CBR2 receptors. Although various drugs act on various receptors, the ultimate result is a re-writing of brain maps in such a way that the internal visual machinery of the brain creates images in the mind, bypassing or altering the normal visual processes that involve the external facing eye and retina. One of the key differences between safe natural psychedelics like - psilocybin, peyote and cannabis - and the synthetic psychedelics - such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and opioids - is that these natural psychedelics do not damage the brain machinery, unlike the synthetic ones. I believe the above listed natural psychedelics actually aid in healing damaged brain machinery, which is why they are not addictive. It is also the reason why these natural psychedelics are used to heal brains damaged from cocaine, methamphetamine and opioid addictions, and to wean users away from the synthetic psychedelics that build dependence. Dependence here means that once a person is used to these synthetic psychedelics, that user is unable to function normally without these synthetics, whereas with the natural psychedelics no such dependency is built, since the brain machinery remain intact, or possibly even better, post usage. Of course, there are dangerous natural psychedelics that severely damage brain cells. Dhatura, belonging to the same natural order as hyoscyamus and belladonna, has the active principle hyoscyamine with small quantities of atropine and hyoscine. The active principle of belladonna is atropine with some hyoscyamine. These are some examples of freely available dangerous natural psychedelics. Studies done by Dr. D D Cunningham on a rhesus macaque, in the 1890s, with dhatura showed extensive damage of brain tissue within a short period of time. Some of the bad propaganda associated with cannabis is due to the usage of substances like dhatura, opium, arsenic, and nux vomica (containing the toxin scopalamine) as admixtures with cannabis, with cannabis finally getting the bad rap.
Most natural psychedelics are found only in specific geographies. Hence they are difficult to obtain by the world at large. For example, peyote is typically found only in South and Central America, psilocybin is found in parts of America and a few other places in the world. Ibogaine as stated earlier is typically found in West Africa. The synthetic psychedelics can, of course, be created in a lab anywhere, provided that one has the necessary ingredients.
Nearly all psychedelics are ingested and their effects kick in once the digestive system starts breaking them down. This usually takes a few minutes to a couple of hours. Natural psychedelics typically are emetic, i.e. they produce nausea and vomiting.
It is quite common in the use of psychedelics for the novice user to have an experienced guide to accompany one on the journey. The guide is typically an experienced psychedelic user who ensures that the novice does not have a bad experience. This is done by talking the novice user through the early stages of the experience, and calming down the anxieties and apprehensions that the novice user may have. The guide also ensures that adverse experiences are kept to a minimum, and that the novice user is able to emerge from the experience without any difficulties. You could call this the equivalent of a novice pilot being accompanied by an experienced flier on his or her first flight.
One of the key questions that is often asked is whether cannabis is a psychedelic. My take on this is an emphatic yes, cannabis is a psychedelic. I have personally experienced profound alterations of reality with good cannabis. Some examples of such experiences that I have had are - having a mental image of the world as yin and yang - with life emerging from one side of the world and life disappearing into another side of the world; faces of persons that I am in conversation with distorting to emerge as radiant, angelic and beautiful beyond words; erotic imagery emerging from dark shadows where there may have been none in conventional reality. I found a description of the face distortion aspects of cannabis in Jack Kerouac's book On the Road. In this, he writes about his marijuana experience in Mexico as follows - ''For a mad moment I thought Dean was understanding everything he said by sheer wild insight and sudden revelatory genius inspired by his glowing happiness. In that moment, too, he looked so exactly like Franklin Delano Roosevelt - some delusion in my flaming eyes and floating brain - that I drew up in my seat and gasped with amazement. In myriad pricklings of heavenly radiation I had to struggle to see Dean's figure, and he looked like God.'
The effects of seeing the world in beautiful, colorful, radiant detail is one that I have quite frequently, in fact, every time I have smoked cannabis. This effect of cannabis is comparable to what others have described as effects from consuming psilocybin or mescaline, which I have not yet had the good fortune to enjoy, and also LSD. Kerouac also speaks about this visual beauty in On the Road. He says - 'I was so high I had to lean my head back on the seat; the bouncing of
the car sent shivers of ecstasy through me. The mere thought of looking
out the window at Mexico - which was now something else in my mind - was
like recoiling from some gloriously riddled glittering treasure-box
that you're afraid to look at because of your eyes, they bend inward,
the richness and the treasures are too much to take all at once. I
gulped. I saw streams of gold pouring through the sky and right across
the tattered roof of the poor old car, right across my eyeballs and
indeed right inside them; it was everywhere. I looked out the window at
the hot, sunny streets and saw a woman in a doorway and I thought she
was listening to every word we said and nodding to herself - routine
paranoic visions due to tea. But the stream of gold continued. For a
long time I lost consciousness in my lower mind of what we were doing
and only came around sometime later when I looked up from fire and
silence like waking from sleep to the world, or waking from void to a
dream, and they told me we were parked outside Victor's house and he was
already at the door of the car with his little baby son in his arms,
showing him to us.' Another distortion, or rather I should say clarity that I have experienced with cannabis, has to do with listening to music under its influence. There have been occasions when I have felt myself immersed in a pool of sound created by the music floating out of the speakers, hearing sounds and details that I never heard before, despite having listening to the same musical piece numerous times.
Many persons are averse to considering cannabis as a psychedelic. This may be because of the poor quality of cannabis that they have consumed, or a problem with their mental make up and its lack of receptivity and plasticity. It also may be because of the myths and stereotypes that have been created around cannabis in the last 150 years or so, that cannabis is a harmful drug, that it is a recreational drug, that it is used by despicable lower classes and castes, and other races and ethnic groups who are ignorant and stupid.
The distortion of time and space is an effect of cannabis that many persons have experienced and spoken of. Time seems to stand still. Space loses its rigid dimensions and starts to appear fluid and flowing. The senses become heightened to a great extent. One is able to hear the faintest and most distant sounds. One is able to feel the lightest of touches. One's sense of taste and smell get heightened to a great extent, and this is almost always in a pleasant way. Some of these effects are responsible for cannabis being considered an aphrodisiac par excellence.
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1895 says the following regarding the immediate effects of cannabis usage - 'Dr. Russell (Bengal witness No. 105), in his note furnished to Dr.
Prain, gives the following effects of "doses pushed to produce a decided
effect": "Mental effects appear in from three to five minutes;
exhilaration and excitement of a pleasing nature: the subject talkative
and merry; laughs and gesticulates; plays on imaginary musical
instruments and sings; converses with imaginary persons; illusions and
delusions, usually of a pleasing nature;' In its summary on the immediate effects of cannabis consumption, the Commission states that - '485. Judging from the replies of several witnesses, the immediate
effect of the moderate use of any of the hemp drugs on the habitual
consumer is refreshing and stimulating, and alleviates fatigue, giving
rise to pleasurable sensations all over the nervous system, so that the
consumer is "at peace with everybody"—in a grand waking dream. He is
able to concentrate his thoughts on one subject: it affords him
pleasure, vigour, ready wit, capacity for hard work, and sharpness for
business; it has a quieting effect on the nervous system, and removes
restlessness and induces forgetfulness of mental troubles; all sorts of
grotesque ideas rapidly pass through the mind, with a tendency to talk;
it brightens the eyes, and, like a good cigar, gives content; the man
feels jolly, sings songs, and tells good stories;'
It is many of the psychedelic effects of cannabis that makes it the world's most widely used entheogen. The feeling of being at peace with everything, the feeling of connectedness with everything, the feeling that all is the spirit, the feeling that everything is in god, and that everything is god, are all reasons why cannabis is the most widely used spiritual aid.
Psychedelic research is one of the areas of mind research that is seeing a resurgence in the west these days, after being stamped out by the paranoia created by government agencies, especially in the US after the 1960s. Organizations such as the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) are among the forerunners in psychedelic research in the US today. There are growing movements to bring about the legalization of natural psychedelics, mainly peyote and psilocybin, especially in US states, such as Colorado, that have legalized adult recreational cannabis use for over a decade now. Some indigenous communities have been permitted to use natural psychedelics as a part of their spiritual practices by law courts in the US.
I have not had a chance to consume any of the other natural psychedelics, besides cannabis. Peyote and ayahuasca are not native to where I grew up and now reside. Psilocybin mushrooms can be found in South India, but I have not yet had the opportunity to consume them. If I ever did, I would prefer to do so in the natural settings where they grow. I am averse to trying out LSD, and this aversion exists for all synthetic human-made drugs, be they recreational or pharmaceutical.
While it is necessary to legalize all natural psychedelics, and to take them out of the list of banned substances in global drug laws, it is of paramount importance to legalize cannabis first and foremost. Cannabis is the one natural psychedelic with the safest profile that grows all over the world, making it accessible to every geographical demographic, and to the most number of humans. It can be consumed in multiple ways. It can be dosed in various quantities without producing dangerous effects. It does not need the presence of a guide as much as the other psychedelics, though novice users may benefit from their presence. It can be consumed by various age groups and all genders, though for young children it is typically given as medicine. The other natural psychedelics can only benefit users who are in close proximity to them, or those who can afford to access them.
The mind healing psychedelic aspect of cannabis is urgently required for a collective humanity that has lost its connection with nature, a humanity that now, because of this distortion of reality, attempts to recreate the same bleak landscape that it finds inside its mind in the natural world outside. If we do not do this quickly enough it would be world wide suicide...with us taking down numerous other living beings along with us due to our own collective insanity...
Related articles
The following articles speak about psychedelics, and also cannabis as a psychedelic.
'Beyond laughs, Chappelle’s openness about substance use has also made a serious impact on the drug policy reform debate. Former NAACP head and Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous, for example, said it was Chappelle who first convinced him that marijuana should be legal.
In her interview this week with Rock, DeGeneres said she’d be wary of tripping. “I think I would be freaked out,” she said. “Everyone that goes there drinks the mushroom tea?”
“Yeah, man!” Rock said. “We’re in a cornfield in a pandemic. What have you got to lose?”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/dave-chappelles-marijuana-and-psychedelics-parties-dont-concern-local-sheriff/
'Studies seem to show that some psychedelic drugs can relieve the symptoms of chronic mental illnesses, including addiction, PTSD and severe depression, possibly by helping the brain to create new connections between neurons. Ongoing clinical trials are attempting to use the magic-mushroom compound psilocybin, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy) to treat various psychiatric disorders.
But these drugs’ hallucinogenic properties make them difficult to administer, because the recipients require constant supervision, and the hallucinatory effects can be a challenging experience. Some researchers are now looking for psychedelic-like molecules that retain the therapeutic potential without the trippy side effects.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01156-y
'Magic mushrooms, or shrooms, and LSD, or acid, are two of the most common psychedelics and they have a lot of similarities. Both are recognized as classic psychedelics, with a meaningful influence on science and culture, and both have been identified as physiologically safe with a low risk of sparking dependency in consumers. What’s more, mushrooms and LSD are serotonergic hallucinogens, so their primary mechanism of action is on serotonin receptors in the brain.
But do these similarities mean shrooms and acid are more or less interchangeable? How do shrooms stack up against acid when it comes to effects, ingestion method, dosage, onset time, and trip duration? What distinguishes an acid trip from a mushroom trip, if anything at all?'
https://www.leafly.com/learn/psychedelics/types-of-psychedelics/shrooms-vs-acid
'How do the doses and descriptions above compare to what has been observed in controlled, human clinical trials? In some of the pioneering psilocybin studies done at Johns Hopkins University, controlled doses of psilocybin were administered to patients.
The studies gave people a range of psilocybin doses and generally found that high doses often induced a “mystical-type experience,” the formal research definition for what we might call a “full-blown psychedelic experience.”
The doses given to induce such effects were in the 20-30 milligram range for psilocybin, or between the medium and high doses in the dosing guide above.
In other words, a full eighth-ounce, or 3.5 grams, of dried P. cubensis is likely to contain more psilocybin than the doses given to reliably induce mystical-type experiences in controlled human studies.'
https://www.leafly.com/learn/psychedelics/how-to-dose-mushrooms
'The director said researchers have “had all kinds of limitations” and there’s “limited opportunity for access.” He noted that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has recently moved to expand the number of marijuana manufacturers, but he said what the government “really needs” to do is “moderate the Schedule I limitation.”
He said he’s spoken with NIDA Director Nora Volkow about the issue and feels there should be a modified Schedule I category called Schedule I-R, “which would be basically a different pathway if you’re going to use this material for research.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/top-federal-health-official-touts-psychedelics-therapeutic-benefits-and-slams-marijuana-scheduling/
'Weiss points out that rather than debating whether or not cannabis could be understood as a psychedelic, it could be more useful to identify both as entheogens.
“[Entheogens are] defined as promoting life-altering experiences, profound insights, and spiritual connectedness, or ‘generating the God within,’” said Weiss. “Like psychedelics, the use of Cannabis sativa has been widely documented as a powerful shamanic medicine for thousands of years all over our planet—many people across the world view cannabis as a master plant or teacher.”'
https://www.leafly.com/learn/psychedelics/is-weed-a-psychedelic
'The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is proposing a massive increase in the production of marijuana and psilocybin for research purposes, with the intent of aiding in the development of new federally approved therapeutic medications.
In a notice set to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, DEA said it is proposing “significant increases” in the manufacturing of “the schedule I substances psilocybin, psilocin, marihuana, and marihuana extract, which are directly related to increased interest by DEA registrants in the use of hallucinogenic controlled substances for research and clinical trial purposes.”
“DEA firmly believes in supporting regulated research of schedule I controlled substances,” it said. “Therefore, the [Aggregate Production Quota] increases reflect the need to fulfill research and development requirements in the production of new drug products, and the study of marijuana effects in particular, as necessary steps toward potential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of new drug products.”'
'The Biden administration proposed a change to the federal drug scheduling system on Thursday that it hopes will streamline research into Schedule I controlled substances including marijuana and psychedelics such as psilocybin.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) said in a letter to congressional leaders and a plan posted on the agency’s website that it wants to encourage research in part by simplifying the registration process for scientists to access Schedule I drugs so that they match those for less-restricted Schedule II substances.
This is part of a broader White House initiative to develop what it says is a strategy to reduce the supply of illicit fentanyl analogues, while “protecting civil rights, and reducing barriers to scientific research for all schedule I substances.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/bidens-drug-czar-wants-to-make-it-easier-to-research-marijuana-psychedelics-and-other-schedule-i-substances/
' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy.
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all you weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
It is notoriously difficult to prise your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.
If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phylum and/or personal inclination), or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
'Nowadays, peyote is mostly used by indigenous Americans, members of the Native American Church, or individuals such as Stebbins looking to experience a transformative psychedelic trip.
Peyote is currently recognized as an endangered or threatened plant and with its Schedule I drug classification, there have been few clinical studies of mescaline since the 1970s. While the psychedelic research renaissance is underway with studies on psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, ketamine, and DMT exploding, mescaline has been somewhat sidelined.
That being said, there’s significant evidence to suggest mescaline holds therapeutic potential in treating mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, migraines, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and addiction.
In a 2021 survey of mescaline consumers, researchers reported that 68-86% of individuals with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addictive disorders experienced an improvement following their most memorable mescaline experience. Among these participants, 35-50% rated their mescaline experience as one of the five most spiritually meaningful experiences of their lives. '
https://www.leafly.com/learn/psychedelics/types-of-psychedelics/peyote-mescaline
'The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is proposing a dramatic increase in the legal production of marijuana and psychedelics like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA and DMT to be used in research next year.
In a notice scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Monday, the agency said there’s been a “significant increase in the use of schedule I hallucinogenic controlled substances for research and clinical trial purposes,” and it wants authorized manufacturers to meet that growing demand.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/dea-proposes-dramatic-increase-in-marijuana-and-psychedelic-production-in-2022-calling-for-6300-percent-more-mdma-alone/
'“We have a contract with DEA. We are growing cannabis for [Food and Drug Administration] clinical trials and selling it to the DEA,” she said. “It’s unconscionable the way they are behaving—and further proof that the word ‘cannabis’ continues to be completely radioactive even though this is a 100 percent federally legal operation.”
“Fortunately, there are banks that care about the progress of federally regulated and federally legal research and are eager to step up and support us immediately,” Sisley added. “We will be moving our funding from Bank of America and never returning there. Our research continues without harm because other banks that care about scientific freedom were able to step up. Bank of America doesn’t even have the decency to provide an explanation after a decade of banking with an openly plant-touching business.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/bank-of-america-cancels-account-of-marijuana-and-psychedelics-research-institute-registered-with-dea/
'But now the bouncing was no longer unpleasant; it was the most pleasant and graceful billowy trip in the world, as over a blue sea, and Dean's face was suffused with an unnatural glow that was like gold as he told us to understand the springs of the car now for the first time and dig the ride. Up and down we bounced, and even Victor understood and laughed.' - On the Road, Jack Kerouac
'For a mad moment I thought Dean was understanding everything he said by sheer wild insight and sudden revelatory genius inspired by his glowing happiness. In that moment, too, he looked so exactly like Franklin Delano Roosevelt - some delusion in my flaming eyes and floating brain - that I drew up in my seat and gasped with amazement. In myriad pricklings of heavenly radiation I had to struggle to see Dean's figure, and he looked like God. I was so high I had to lean my head back on the seat; the bouncing of the car sent shivers of ecstasy through me. The mere thought of looking out the window at Mexico - which was now something else in my mind - was like recoiling from some gloriously riddled glittering treasure-box that you're afraid to look at because of your eyes, they bend inward, the richness and the treasures are too much to take all at once. I gulped. I saw streams of gold pouring through the sky and right across the tattered roof of the poor old car, right across my eyeballs and indeed right inside them; it was everywhere. I looked out the window at the hot, sunny streets and saw a woman in a doorway and I thought she was listening to every word we said and nodding to herself - routine paranoic visions due to tea. But the stream of gold continued. For a long time I lost consciousness in my lower mind of what we were doing and only came around sometime later when I looked up from fire and silence like waking from sleep to the world, or waking from void to a dream, and they told me we were parked outside Victor's house and he was already at the door of the car with his little baby son in his arms, showing him to us.'
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Osmond’s close friend, the writer Aldous Huxley, promoted French philosopher Henri Bergson’s theory of the brain as a filter which reduced information, like sensory inputs or memories, so reality wasn’t so overwhelming. Bergson wrote that without that filter, people might be able to remember everything that had ever happened to them, or perceive everything occurring in the universe—accessing a kind of clairvoyance.
Huxley thought this was how psychedelics could lead to telepathy. He wrote that psychedelics might turn off the “reducing valve” in the brain, and people could be telepathic and have access to other mystical experiences. This theory is directly related to the title of his book, The Doors of Perception, which comes from a William Blake quote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34xa5/the-long-strange-relationship-between-psychedelics-and-telepathy
'"If you don't know, come to learn...if you know, come to teach." - motto on invitations to National DAs convention in Vegas, April 25-29, 1971
The first session - the opening remarks - lasted most of the afternoon. We sat patiently through the first two hours, although it was clear from the start that we weren't going to learn anything, and it was equally clear that we'd be crazy to try any teaching. It was easy enough to sit there with a head full of mescaline and listen to hour after hour of irrelevant gibberish...There was certainly no risk involved. These poor bastards didn't know mescaline from macaroni.
I suspect we could have done the whole thing on acid...except for some of the people; there were faces and bodies in that group who would have been absolutely unendurable on acid. The sight of a 344-pound police chief from Waco, Texas, necking openly with his 290-pound wife (or whatever woman he had with him) when the lights were turned off for a Dope Film was just barely tolerable on mescaline - which is mainly a sensual/surface drug that exaggerates reality, instead of altering it - but with a head full of acid, the sight of two fantastically obese human beings far gone in a public grope while a thousand cops all around them watched a movie about the "dangers of marijuana" would not be emotionally acceptable. The brain would reject it: the medulla would attempt to close itself off from the signals it was getting from the frontal lobes...and the middle-brain, meanwhile, would be trying desperately to put a different interpretation on the scene, before passing it back to the medulla and the risk of physical action.'
- Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Part II...by Raoul Duke, November 25, 1971, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Acid is a relatively complex drug, in its effects, while mescaline is pretty simple and straightforward - but in a scene like this, the difference was academic. There was simply no call, at this conference, for anything but a massive consumption of Downers: reds, grass, and booze, because the whole program had apparently been set up by people who had been in a Seconal stupor since 1964.
Here were more than a thousand top-level cops telling each other "we must come to terms with the drug culture," but they had no idea where to start. They couldn't even find the goddamn thing. There were rumours in the hallways that maybe the Mafia was behind it. Or perhaps the Beatles. At one point somebody in the audience asked Bloomquist if he thought Margaret Mead's "strange behavior," of late, might possibly be explained by a private marijuana addiction.
"I really don't know," Bloomquist replied. "But at her age, if she did smoke grass, she'd have one hell of a trip."
The audience roared with laughter at this remark.'
- Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Part II...by Raoul Duke, November 25, 1971, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'The girl riding with me tonight is looking for an old boyfriend who moved out of Boston and is now living, she says, in a chicken coop in a sort of informal commune near Greenville, N.H. It is five or six degrees above zero outside and she doesn't even have a blanket, much less a sleeping bag, but this doesn't worry her. "I guess it sounds crazy," she explains. "we don't even sleep together. He's just a friend. But I'm happy when I'm with him because he makes me like myself."
Jesus, I thought. We've raised a generation of stone desperate cripples. She is twenty-two, a journalism grad from Boston University, and now - six months out of college - she talks so lonely and confused that she is eagerly looking forward to spending a few nights in a frozen chicken coop with some poor bastard who doesn't even know she's coming.
The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era - but nobody guessed, back then, that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover, a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything.'
- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'"Wonderful," I said. "That's one more summer that I have an excuse to avoid. But what happened? Why do they blame me?"
"Jesus Christ!" he said. "That crazy sonofabitch got on the train wearing your press badge and went completely crazy. He drank about ten martinis before the train even got moving, then he started abusing people. He cornered some poor bastard from one of the Washington papers and called him a Greasy Faggot and a Community Buttfucker...then he started pushing him around and saying that he was going to throw him off the train at the next bridge...we couldn't believe it was happening. He scared one of the network TV guys so badly that he locked himself in one of the lavatories for the rest of the trip."
"Jesus, I hate to hear this," I said. "But nobody really thought it was me, did they?"
"Hell, yes, they did," he replied. "The only people on the train who even know what you look like were me and - and -," (He mentioned several reporters whose names needn't be listed here.) "But everybody else just looked at that ID badge he was wearing, and pretty soon the word was all the way back to Muskie's car that some thug named Thompson from a thing called Rolling Stone was tearing the train apart. They were going to send Rosie Grier up to deal with you, but Dick Stewart [Muskie's press secretary] said it wouldn't look good to have a three-hundred-pound bodyguard beating up journalists on the campaign train."
"That's typical Muskie-staff thinking," I said. "They've done everything else wrong, why balk at stomping a reporter?"
He laughed. "Actually," he said, "the rumor was that you'd eaten a lot of LSD and gone wild - that you couldn't help yourself."
- The Campaign Trail: The Banshee Screams in Florida, April 13, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Chitty and I met him the night before, about two thirty, in the lobby of the Ramada Inn where the press party was quartered. We were heading out to the street to look for a sandwich shop, feeling a trifle bent & very hungry...and as we passed the front desk, here was this huge wild-eyed monster, bellowing at the desk clerk about "All this chickenshit" and "All these pansies around here trying to suck up to Muskie" and "Where the fuck can a man go in this town to have a good time, anyway?"
A scene like that wouldn't normally interest me, but there was something very special about this one - something abnormally crazy in the way he was talking. There was something very familiar about it. I listened for a moment and recognized the Neal Cassady speed-booze-acid rap - a wild combination of menace, madness, genius, and fragmented coherence that wrecks havoc on the mind of any listener.
This is not the kind of thing you expect to hear in the lobby of the Ramada Inn, and especially not in West Palm Beach - so I knew we had no choice but to take this man along with us.
"Don't mind if I do," he said. "At this hour of the night I'll fuck around with just about anybody."
He'd just got out of jail, he explained, as we walked five or six blocks through the warm midnight streets to a twenty-four-hour hamburger place, called the Copper Penny. Fifteen days for vagrancy, and when he hit the bricks today around four he just happened to pick up a newspaper and see that Ed Muskie was in town...'
- The Campaign Trail: The Banshee Screams in Florida, April 13, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'He said a few things that I never really absorbed, but there was nothing he could have said, at that moment, as eloquent or as meaningful as that incredible smile on his face.
'The most common known source of ibogaine is from the roots of Tabernanthe Iboga, a shrub indigenous to West Africa. As early as 1869, TI roots were reported effective in combating sleep or fatigue and in maintaining alertness when ingested by African natives.
Extracts of TI are used by natives while stalking game; it enables them to remain motionless for as long as two days while retaining mental alertness. It has been used for centuries by natives of Africa, Asia, and South America in conjunction with fetishistic and mythical ceremonies. In 1905 the gross effects of chewing large quantities of TI were described..."Soon the nerves get tense in an extraordinary way; an epileptic-like madness comes over him, during which he becomes unconscious and pronounces words which are interpreted by the older members of the group as having a prophetic meaning and to prove that the fetish has entered him."
At the turn of the century, iboga extracts were used as stimulants, aphrodisiacs, and inebriants. They have been available in European drug stores for over 30 years. Much of the research with ibogaine has been done with animals. In the cat, for example, 2-10 mg/kg. given intravenously caused marked excitation, dilated pupils, salivation, and tremors leading to a picture of rage. There was an alerting reaction, obvious apprehension and fear, and attempts to escape...In human studies, at a dose of 300 mg. given orally, the subject experiences visions, changes in perception of the environment, and delusions or alterations of thinking. Visual images become more vivid, with animals often appearing. Ibogaine produces a state of drowsiness in which the subject does not wish to move, open his eyes, or be aware of his environment. Since there appears to be an inverse relationship between the presence of physical symptoms and the richness of the psychological experience, the choice of environment is an important consideration. Many are disturbed by lights or noises...Dr. Claudio Naranjo, a psychotherapist, is responsible for most current knowledge regarding ibogaine effects in humans. He states: "I have been more impressed by the enduring effects resulting from ibogaine than by those from sessions conducted with any other drug."'
- from a study by PharmChem Laboratories, Palo Alto, California.'
- The Campaign Trail: More Late News from Bleak House, May 11, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Not much has been said about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the presidential campaign, but toward the end of the Wisconsin primary race - about a week before the vote - word leaked out that some of Muskie's top advisers had called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with "some kind of strange drug" that nobody in the press corps had ever heard of.
It had been common knowledge for many weeks that Humphrey was using an exotic brand of speed known as "Wallot"...and it had long been whispered that Muskie was into something heavy, but it was hard to take the talk seriously until I heard about the appearance of the mysterious Brazilian doctor. That was the key.
I immediately recognized the Ibogaine Effect - from Muskie's tearful breakdown on the flatbed truck in New Hampshire, the delusional and altered thinking that characterized his campaign in Florida, and finally the condition of "total rage" that gripped him in Wisconsin.
There was no doubt about it: the Man from Maine had turned to massive doses of ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was "when did he start?" But nobody could answer this one, and I was not able to press the candidate himself for the answer because I was permanently barred from the Muskie campaign after that incident on the Sunshine Special in Florida...and that scene makes far more sense now than it did at that time.'
- The Campaign Trail: More Late News from Bleak House, May 11, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'McGOVERN AND FRIEND
"Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), shown here campaigning in Nebraska where he has spent 23 hours a day for the past six days denying charges by local Humphrey operatives that he favors the legalization of Marijuana, pauses between denials to shake hands for photographers with his "old friend" Hunter S. Thompson, the notorious National Correspondent for Rolling Stone who was recently identified by Newsweek magazine as a vicious drunkard and known abuser of hard drugs."
A thing like that would have finished him here in Nebraska. No more of that "Hi, sheriff" bullshit; I am now the resident puff adder...and the problem is very real. In Ohio, which McGovern eventually lost by a slim nineteen-thousand-vote margin, his handlers figure perhaps ten thousand of those were directly attributable to his public association with Warren Beatty, who once told a reporter somewhere that he favored legalizing grass. This was picked up by the worthless asshole Sen. Henry Jackson (D.Wash.) and turned into a major issue.
So it fairly boggles the mind to think what Humphrey's people might do with a photo of McGovern shaking hands with a person who once ran for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, with a platform embracing the use and frequent enjoyment of Mescaline by the sheriff and all his deputies at any hour of the day or night that seemed Right.'
- The Campaign Trail: Crank-Time on the Low Road, June 8, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'"Don't worry," I assured them. "You'll be proud of me. There's a lot of bad blood between me and John Chancellor. He put acid in my drink last month at the Democratic Convention, then he tried to humiliate me in public."
"Acid? Golly, that's terrible! What kind of acid?"
"It felt like Sunshine," I said.
"Sunshine?"
"Yeah. He denied it, of course - But hell, he always denies it."
"Why?" a girl asked.
"Would you admit to a thing like that?" I said.
She shook her head emphatically. "But I wouldn't do it, either," she said. "You could kill somebody my making them drink acid - why would he want to kill you?"
I shrugged. "Who knows? He eats a lot of it himself." I paused, sensing confusion..."Actually, I doubt if he really wanted to kill me. It was a hell of a dose, but not that strong." I smiled. "All I could remember is that first rush: it came up my spine like nine tarantulas...drilled me right to the bar stool for two hours; I couldn't speak, couldn't even blink my eyes."
"Boy, what kind of acid does that?" somebody asked.
"Sunshine," I said. "Every time."
By now several others had picked up on the conversation. A bright looking kid in a blue gabardine suit interrupted: "Sunshine acid? Are you talking about LSD?"
- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Now the others understood. A few laughed, but others muttered darkly, " You mean John Chancellor goes around putting LSD in people's drinks? He takes it himself?...He's a dope addict?..."
"Golly," said the girl. "That explains a lot, doesn't it?"
By this time I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Those poor, ignorant young waterheads. Would they pass this weird revelation to their parents when they got back home to Middletown, Shaker Heights, and Orange County? Probably so, I thought. And then their parents would write letters to NBC, saying they'd learned from reliable sources that Chancellor was addicted to LSD-25 - supplied to him in great quantities, no doubt, by Communist agents - and demanding that he be jerked off the air immediately and locked up.
I was tempted to start babbling crazily about Walter Cronkite: that he was heavy into the white slavery trade - sending agents to South Vietnam to adopt orphan girls, then shipping them back to his farm in Quebec to be lobotomized and sold into brothels up and down the Eastern seaboard...'
- The Campaign Trail: More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb, September 28, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'I recalled these things Ford had said, but I was not sure I'd heard Dick Tuck correctly - or if I'd really heard him at all. I held my right hand in front of my eyes, trying to remember if I'd eaten anything the night before to cause hallucinations. If so, my hand would appear to be transparent, and I would be able to see all the bones and blood vessels very clearly.
But my hand was not transparent. I moaned again, bringing Sandy in from the kitchen to find out what was wrong. "Did Tuck just call?" I asked.
She nodded: "He was almost hysterical. Ford just gave Nixon a full pardon."
I sat up quickly, groping around the bed for something to smash. "No!" I shouted. "That's impossible!"
She shook her head. "I heard it on the radio, too."
I stared at my hands again, feeling anger behind my eyes and noise coming up in my throat: "That stupid, lying bastard! Jesus! Who votes for these treacherous scumbags! You can't even trust the dumb ones! Look at Ford! He's too goddamn stupid to arrange a deal like that! Hell, he's almost too stupid to lie."
Sandy shrugged. "He gave Nixon all the tapes, too."'
- Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises, October 10, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'What finally cracked the Brown Buffalo was the bridge he refused to build between the self-serving elegance of his instincts and the self-destructive carnival of his reality. He was a Baptist missionary at a leper colony in Panama before he was a lawyer in Oakland and East L.A., or a radical-chic author in San Francisco and Beverly Hills...But whenever things got tense or when he had to work close to the bone, he was always a missionary. And that was the governing instinct that ruined him for anything else. He was a preacher in the courtroom, a preacher at the typewriter, and a flat-out awesome preacher when he cranked his head full of acid.
That's LSD-25, folks - a certified "dangerous drug" that is no longer fashionable, due to reasons of extreme and unnatural heaviness. The CIA was right about acid: some of their best and brightest operatives went over the side in the name of Top Secret research on a drug that was finally abandoned as a far too dangerous and unimaginable thing to be used as a public weapon. Not even the sacred minnock of "national security" could justify the hazards of playing with a thing too small to be seen and too big to control. The professional spook mentality was more comfortable with things like nerve gas and neutron bombs.
But not the Brown Buffalo - he ate LSD-25 with a relish that bordered on worship. When his brain felt bogged down in the mundane nuts-and-bolts horrors of the Law or some dead-end manuscript, he would simply take off in his hot rod Mustang for a week on the road and a few days of what he called "walking with the King." Oscar used acid like other lawyers use Valium - a distinctly unprofessional and occasionally nasty habit that shocked even the most liberal of his colleagues and frequently panicked his clients.'
- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'When he came booming into a bar called the Daisy Duck in Aspen and announced he was the trouble we'd all been waiting for, he was definitely into the politics of confrontation - and on all fronts: in the bars or the courts or the streets, if necessary.
Oscar was not into serious street fighting, but he was hell on wheels in a bar brawl. Any combination of a two-hundred-fifty- pound Mexican and LSD-25 is a potentially terminal menace for anything it can reach - but when the alleged Mexican is in fact a profoundly angry Chicano lawyer with no fear at all of anything that walks on less than three legs and a de-facto suicidal conviction that we will die at the age of thirty-three - just like Jesus Christ - you have a serious piece of work on your hands. Especially if the bastard is already thirty-three and a half years old with a head full of Sandoz acid, a loaded .357 Magnum in his belt, a hatchet-wielding Chicano bodyguard at his elbow at all times, and a disconcerting habit of projectile-vomiting geysers of pure red blood off the front porch every thirty or forty minutes, or whenever his malignant ulcer can't handle any more raw tequila.
This was the Brown Buffalo in the full crazed flower of his prime - a man, indeed, for all seasons. And it was somewhere in the middle of his thirty-third year, in fact, when he came out to Colorado - with his faithful bodyguard, Frank - to rest for a while after his grueling campaign for sheriff of Los Angeles County, which he lost by a million or so votes. But in defeat, Oscar had managed to create an instant political base for himself in the vast Chicano barrio of East Los Angeles - where even the most conservative of the old-line "Mexican-Americans" were suddenly calling themselves "Chicanos" and getting their first taste of tear gas at "La Raza" demonstrations, which Oscar was quickly learning to use as a fire-and-brimstone forum to feature himself as the main spokesman for a mushrooming "Brown Power" movement that the LAPD called more dangerous than the Black Panthers.
Which was probably true, at that time - but in retrospect it sounds a bit different than it did back in 1969 when the sheriff was sending out fifteen or twenty helicopter sorties a night to scan the rooftops and backyards of the barrio with huge sweeping searchlights that drove Oscar and his people into fits of blind rage every time they got nailed in a pool of blazing white light with a joint in one hand and a machete in the other'
- Fear & Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, December 15, 1977, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'I was getting too nervous to continue without chemical assistance. I reached under my seat for my kit bag, which contained five or six capsules of Black Acid. Wonderful, I thought. This is just what I need. I ate one and went back to pondering the map. There was a place called Deeth, just ahead, where a faintly marked side road appeared to wander uphill through the mountains and down along a jagged ridge into Jackpot from behind. Good, I thought, this is it. We could sneak in to Jackpot by dawn.
Just then I felt a blow on the side of my head as the Judge came awake with a screech, flailing his arms around him like he was coming out of a nightmare. "What's happening, goddamn it?" he said. "Where are we? They're after us." He was jabbering in a foreign language that quickly lapsed into English as he tried to aim the gun. "Oh, God," he screamed. "They're right on top of us. Get moving, goddamn it. I'll kill every bastard I see."
He was coming out of a nightmare. I grabbed him by the neck and put him in a headlock until he went limp. I pulled him back up in the seat and handed him a spansule of acid. "Here, Judge, take this," I said. "It'll calm you down."
He swallowed the pill and said nothing as I turned onto the highway and stood heavily on the accelerator. We were up to 115 when a green exit sign that said "Deeth No Services" loomed suddenly out of the rain just in front of us. I swerved hard to the right and tried to hang on. But it was no use. I remember the sound of the Judge screaming as we lost control and went into a full 360-degree curl and then backward at seventy-five or eighty through a fence and into a pasture.
For some reason the near-fatal accident had a calming effect on the Judge. Or maybe it was the acid. I didn't care one way or the other after I took the gun from his hand. He gave it up without a fight.'
- Fear and Loathing in Elko, January 23, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'I will miss Tim Leary - not for his wisdom or his beauty or his warped lust for combat or because of his wealth or his power or his drugs, but mainly because I won't hear his laughing voice on my midnight telephone anymore. Tim usually called around 2. It was his habit - one of many that we shared, and he knew that I would be awake.
Tim and I kept the same hours. He believed, as I do, that "after midnight, all things are possible."
Just last week he called me on the phone at two-thirty in the morning and said he was moving to a ranch in Nicaragua in a few days and would fax me the telephone number. Which he did. And I think he also faxed it to Dr. Kasey.
Indeed. There are many rooms in the mansion. And Tim was familiar with most of them. We will never know the range of his fiendish vision, or the many lives he was sucked into by his savage and unnatural passions.
We sometimes disagreed, but in the end we made our peace. Tim was a Chieftain. He Stomped on the Terra, and he left his elegant hoof prints on all our lives.
He is forgotten now but not gone. We will see him soon enough. Our tribe is now smaller by one. Our circle is one link shorter. And there is one more name in the honor list of pure warriors who saw the great light and leapt for it.'
- Memo from the National Affairs Desk. To: Jann S. Wenner, August 8, 1996, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
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