“[Dölen] thinks the trip is necessary for long-term healing”
Intuitively, this would seem to make more sense to me. A trip, positive or negative, is always a shock for the nervous system, which is what gives it such tremendous potential. (Then again, positive results with microdosing would seem to suggest otherwise, so what do I know…I have personally found microdosing inconclusive for myself, so far) This silly idea of healing without tripping, just sounds like conservative shenanigans to me. “Alright, we will allow you to get better, but none of this ridiculous temporarily modifying your consciousness!”
Overall I really feel of two minds regarding the current interest in psychedelics for therapeutical purposes. On one hand, obviously that’s great news. But the risk of having it coopted by the all-devouring Moloch of capitalism seems around the corner.
Thanks, as always, Spookah, for your generous and insightful comments.
I didn’t come out and say so, but I’m obviously in Dölen’s camp: it seems necessary to trip in order to gain insight. At the same time, the suffering of others who are afraid of tripping (psychedeliaphobia?) because of what they saw on Dragnet or whatever: I hope Olson’s psychoplastogen idea helps those people. But I am dubious. I think we’ll see a lot more about this over the next 3-5 years. It’s wild how we know enough now about how serotonin receptors work now that this very idea can work. The Q is: how well can it work? My intuition says: there’s something overblown about this.
Erik Davis and few others have been writing and talking about the problems around people like us and the new “all-devouring Moloch,” as you put it. My only approach to this as of this date is pretend the corporate stuff doesn’t even exist. It’s still 1977 for me, in other words.
Every time I think of the critical period staying open for 2-3 weeks after LSD/DMT/psilocybin/MDMA/other Shulgin compounds, etc: my imagination of the implications sends me all omnidirectional and quaquaversal. My gawd, friends: PAY ATTENTION to your setting for at least 2 weeks after!
The metaphors around the term “imprint”, similarly, can easily slide into Manchurian Candidacies galore. L. Ron Hubbard insisted that words heard by the fetus are imprinted, then activated when born, for example. I got this from reading Wm. S. Burroughs: The Job, pp.120-121. Any one of us can come up with a host of similar possibly bogus and/or horrific examples around “imprinting,” a metaphor which I assume came out of Gutenberg.
Word is not the territory/menu is not the meal, etc.
Have you read Secret Drugs of Buddhism by Lama Mike Crowley? Got me interested in Aminita muscaria which seems to be legal most everywhere.
Side note, I now think that Buddhists drinking their urine to prove something have missed an important point, though maybe they were leaving out critical parts of the story on purpose.
No, I haven’t read Lama Mike Crowley yet. The amanita seems to be the one mushroom that’s most attractive to illustrators, with its red/white, which supposedly influenced the idea of Sinter Klaas, from near the North Pole.
IIRC, Sami shamans drank reindeer urine after the deer had eaten amanita. The ibotenic acid in the shroom converts to muscimole in the deer’s body, which modulates the effect of the drug. It seems quite plausible that human bodies do the same.
Your Q reminded me of a short article Hamilton Morris wrote about a Danish chemist who experimented with derivatives of GABA, a natural neurotransmitter. The idea for doing this started with studies on amanita. GABA-ergic drugs are the classic benzos: Valium, Xanax, alcohol, etc. One of the derivatives, which was later named Gaboxadol, seemed to work like these drugs, but with more variable effects, and it got shelved.
(Just re-read the Morris article: how many particulars I’d forgotten!) About 20 years later a somnologist at the Max Planck Institute found that Gaboxodol induced sleep effectively without affecting the REM phase as benzos do. It was reintroduced and performed way better than Ambien, and in rodents there was no tolerance, meaning: the same dosage would perform well without having to increase dosages over time. And now I see I’m just typing too much: the article by Morris I found gripping:
I like the part of the story where communists are assassinating shamans to discourage use of the mushroom. I'm astonished the mushroom is legal to buy, sell and ingest here in the United Snakes. Also the digression including "lesions were on my mind." is hilarious.
Thanks for the link, lvx. Lama Mike Crowley makes a damned fine argument for amanita urine as soma.
“Lesions were on my mind” was the part that really made this piece gonzo, I thought. Love Hamilton Morris. Have you seen his TV show Hamilton’s Pharmakopoeia?
Terrific piece. My time in an incubator just after my birth may have affected my first circuit imprint. That imprint has proved resistant to reimprinting.
Thanks as always for this quick overview!
“[Dölen] thinks the trip is necessary for long-term healing”
Intuitively, this would seem to make more sense to me. A trip, positive or negative, is always a shock for the nervous system, which is what gives it such tremendous potential. (Then again, positive results with microdosing would seem to suggest otherwise, so what do I know…I have personally found microdosing inconclusive for myself, so far) This silly idea of healing without tripping, just sounds like conservative shenanigans to me. “Alright, we will allow you to get better, but none of this ridiculous temporarily modifying your consciousness!”
Overall I really feel of two minds regarding the current interest in psychedelics for therapeutical purposes. On one hand, obviously that’s great news. But the risk of having it coopted by the all-devouring Moloch of capitalism seems around the corner.
Thanks, as always, Spookah, for your generous and insightful comments.
I didn’t come out and say so, but I’m obviously in Dölen’s camp: it seems necessary to trip in order to gain insight. At the same time, the suffering of others who are afraid of tripping (psychedeliaphobia?) because of what they saw on Dragnet or whatever: I hope Olson’s psychoplastogen idea helps those people. But I am dubious. I think we’ll see a lot more about this over the next 3-5 years. It’s wild how we know enough now about how serotonin receptors work now that this very idea can work. The Q is: how well can it work? My intuition says: there’s something overblown about this.
Erik Davis and few others have been writing and talking about the problems around people like us and the new “all-devouring Moloch,” as you put it. My only approach to this as of this date is pretend the corporate stuff doesn’t even exist. It’s still 1977 for me, in other words.
Every time I think of the critical period staying open for 2-3 weeks after LSD/DMT/psilocybin/MDMA/other Shulgin compounds, etc: my imagination of the implications sends me all omnidirectional and quaquaversal. My gawd, friends: PAY ATTENTION to your setting for at least 2 weeks after!
The metaphors around the term “imprint”, similarly, can easily slide into Manchurian Candidacies galore. L. Ron Hubbard insisted that words heard by the fetus are imprinted, then activated when born, for example. I got this from reading Wm. S. Burroughs: The Job, pp.120-121. Any one of us can come up with a host of similar possibly bogus and/or horrific examples around “imprinting,” a metaphor which I assume came out of Gutenberg.
Word is not the territory/menu is not the meal, etc.
Have you read Secret Drugs of Buddhism by Lama Mike Crowley? Got me interested in Aminita muscaria which seems to be legal most everywhere.
Side note, I now think that Buddhists drinking their urine to prove something have missed an important point, though maybe they were leaving out critical parts of the story on purpose.
No, I haven’t read Lama Mike Crowley yet. The amanita seems to be the one mushroom that’s most attractive to illustrators, with its red/white, which supposedly influenced the idea of Sinter Klaas, from near the North Pole.
IIRC, Sami shamans drank reindeer urine after the deer had eaten amanita. The ibotenic acid in the shroom converts to muscimole in the deer’s body, which modulates the effect of the drug. It seems quite plausible that human bodies do the same.
Your Q reminded me of a short article Hamilton Morris wrote about a Danish chemist who experimented with derivatives of GABA, a natural neurotransmitter. The idea for doing this started with studies on amanita. GABA-ergic drugs are the classic benzos: Valium, Xanax, alcohol, etc. One of the derivatives, which was later named Gaboxadol, seemed to work like these drugs, but with more variable effects, and it got shelved.
(Just re-read the Morris article: how many particulars I’d forgotten!) About 20 years later a somnologist at the Max Planck Institute found that Gaboxodol induced sleep effectively without affecting the REM phase as benzos do. It was reintroduced and performed way better than Ambien, and in rodents there was no tolerance, meaning: the same dosage would perform well without having to increase dosages over time. And now I see I’m just typing too much: the article by Morris I found gripping:
https://harpers.org/archive/2013/08/gaboxadol/
I like the part of the story where communists are assassinating shamans to discourage use of the mushroom. I'm astonished the mushroom is legal to buy, sell and ingest here in the United Snakes. Also the digression including "lesions were on my mind." is hilarious.
Here is a post by Crowley on the topic, but I very much enjoyed the book with it's many illustrations. https://share.google/O6RCZRq4I0gCEeloT
Thanks for the link, lvx. Lama Mike Crowley makes a damned fine argument for amanita urine as soma.
“Lesions were on my mind” was the part that really made this piece gonzo, I thought. Love Hamilton Morris. Have you seen his TV show Hamilton’s Pharmakopoeia?
Also recommend you find a lecture on the topic by Mike Crowley on YouTube... I've watched a few and they're all good.
Did not know the show existed... Will check it out. Thanks for the tip!
Terrific piece. My time in an incubator just after my birth may have affected my first circuit imprint. That imprint has proved resistant to reimprinting.