Once upon the internets, there was a story of some tech-oriented CEO or other in the US who took LSD on a regular basis (I believe, daily). I cannot remember the source of the story. As web searches these days seem filled with Steve Jobs results (argh), this seems like an appropriate forum to ask if anyone remembers who that was?
While a quick search failed, it did highlight the 'notable Polish security research group' Last Stage of Delerium (LSD) and lsd.net, a separate programming business. It seems that the relationship between psychoactive substances and programming (as with any other form of art/creativity/invention) seems a fascinating and well attested one.
(PS. I have contributed to Erowid over many years and also use and recommend the rather quirkier http://bluelight.ru/ which can be fascinating, if you are in the mood for forum-browsing)
Wow, I never knew a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead founded the EFF. Amazing. Also I wasn't aware of Lilly's obvious impact on the video rendering of Neuromancer (re: dolphin communications).
Got a good URL on that? I'm seeing cult accusations with no history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Lenz also doesn't support the tech-company CEO thing. I think this is not the guy I read about previously. No worries, interesting nonetheless... California is quite a factory of characters!
Do not bring money or anything of value with you on your voyage. Why? Inevitably your "higher" self will feel compelled to toss the stained worldly items away.
Later, your "lower" self will regret having tossed them ;-)
I had a very bad habit of buying stuff while tripping. To this day I still have the mirrored aviator sunglasses that I once purchased... That was an expensive but hilarious mistake.
Last summer Phish played two nights at the Harvey's in Stateline NV (ie South Lake Tahoe), a Tuesday-Wednesday. Apparently no one working at the casinos knew what Phish's fan crowd is like, because they were all pretty surprised when the crowd of brightly colored tripping kids (who would be awake until the sun came up) all came back to the casinos after the show ended on Tuesday and filled up their blackjack and roulette tables.
Like a relationship with a person, a relationship with a substance might also not work out.
This might indicate that:
1. This is the wrong person/substance for you.
2. You're not ready. Perhaps if you worked on yourself (through meditation, mindfulness, yoga, spiritual practice, therapy) you could get more out of future experiences.
3. You're abusing the relationship. You're not treating the person or substance with enough respect. All too commonly, psychedelics are used as "party drugs" rather than used constructively in a deliberate therapeutic, spiritual, religious, or shamanic context. This can lead to all sorts of problems.
4. You don't have the right guide or purpose. A therapist skilled in psychedelic therapy could be a great help, as can some serious introspection about exactly what it is you need to get from the experience.
5. Another problem that's all too common is that trippers fail to integrate what they learn on a trip in to the rest of their lives. This could lead to lessons forgotten and backsliding.
6. You might just need a break. Doing psychedelics too frequently is bordering on abuse.
Are you saying healthy psychedelic use must be in a "therapeutic, spiritual, religious, or shamanic" context? Yes, you do have to give these immensely powerful mind altering substances respect, the same way you have to go into a flight lesson with respect for the machine you're flying, but combining that respect with the primary goal of having a fun time seems perfectly valid to me. After all, no matter how profound or world shattering the experience may be, it's still just your own brain working on slightly modified parameters.
> All too commonly, psychedelics are used as "party drugs" rather than used constructively in a deliberate therapeutic, spiritual, religious, or shamanic context. This can lead to all sorts of problems.
Bullshit. Some of my most profound life-altering psychedelic experiences have happened while losing my shit on a dance floor.
Psychedelics are merely tools. Just as coffee is a means to an end when you need to stay awake and work, so psychedelics are a means to an end when you are trying to figure yourself and the world out on an emotional level. Just eating them and expecting benefit is fallacious. It's like buying a hammer and being surprised that you don't suddenly have a shed - you need to pick the tool up, apply it to the relevant things and be skilled in how you do so.
Personally, I see psychedelics as a compliment to meditation. I would not recommend that anyone trip before they have a solid foundation. If your mind wanders easily, if you cannot look inside yourself, if you cannot sit in silence and be OK with it then you are not ready. Meditate regularly for a year first and then you will be able to reap some real benefit from tripping. Don't pick up a hammer before you know what a nail is. You might hit the wrong thing and end up with a hole in the wall.
I've had about 5 or 6 trips, and although some of them had bad moments (I get paranoid about unusual sensations with heart or breathing which are just exaggerated by the mind), I never regretted those trips. They weren't “eye-opening” or something, but the experience was very exciting, especially the nature, the music, the animals & the people part.
(4 and 5 are direct quotes from people I know, one of whom went to #6. I've known people who use frequently and never burn, but there's a certain pattern of use that seems bent that way. The "all there is" mentality is a sign of someone on a dangerous path.)
Insanity is a highly subjective notion and in my view definitively anti-hacker.
Why? Sanity is a mob-rule, society-dictated perspective, with no clear definition.
Yes, 'sanity' in the eyes of society is useful within social systems. However, if one continues to 'function' (eat/sleep/do stuff interesting/be happy/not inflict pain and harm repetitively upon undeserving* others), then what's the problem?
My point is that conceptually, we should all support alternative mental modes of engagement, regardless of society's perspective, as long as they are harmless. We should support differences, not crush them. In heterogeneity lies strength, and humans' great strength is their capacity of abstract thought and communication.
Historically, we know that brilliant art and science derive largely from people who have been labelled insane by contemporary society.
Consider this when choosing to deploy words like 'insane'.
* Let's not get in to a greater discussion of law here.
Sanity does not mean following the rules or being normal, and the concept is not antihacker. Loss of sanity is generally a miserable sad state where the ability to judge reality to either one's own or other's satisfaction is compromised.
Do not mistake insanity for interesting and creative. Heavy drug abuse can cause major permanent brain malfunction that results in a real compromise of sanity, and the result is not pretty.
These HN drug threads are always filled with fearless commentary like this by young people who have never seen the before and after.
The problem though is that it is not harmless. Psychedelics blast your brain chemistry and can have extremely unpredictable consequences, especially with continued use. The effects can spread to not just your life but to the lives of those you care about.
Personally, I think everyone should experience psychedelics when they're ready but to think that they are harmless is dangerous.
The effects of drugs are like having an addiction: you won't know at all what it's like until you try it and once you do, there's no going back, for better or for worse
Agreed, but in a slightly different context: The mixture of psychedelics and many prescribed pharmaceuticals is a danger not many know about, particularly SSRI's. Due to this lack of information the dangers of a bad reaction --psychological or physiological-- are very real; in the case of such, it's always the illegal drug that is blamed, regardless of it's actual toxicity. In the case of Psilocybin or LSD or even DMT (the "nuclear bomb" of psychedelics) actual, measurable neurotoxicity is negligible if non-existant. (That being said, one can never be sure what one gets from the street, but in a controlled laboratory setting this is certainly the case.)
Quantatively perhaps, but qualitatively, insanity is not subjective. It's a miserable, miserable experience I would wish upon no one, and wish no one would experience. Weird is fine, funky beliefs are fine, insanity is a different quality altogether.
By insanity I mean, "severe mental illness", which I don't think you understand (and you should be thankful for that). It seems to be extremely painful for the individual, and it's horrible for the people around that person. I don't classify people with occasional (but harmless) strange thoughts or paranormal beliefs as "insane". That's part of being human. Over a billion people believe that a virgin birth occurred over 2000 years ago. I personally think they're wrong, but I wouldn't call them insane or delusional. That belief, standing alone, is harmless.
I have no problem with people who choose to explore alternate states of consciousness, whether through meditation, brainwave entrainment, sensory deprivation, or psychedelics. I don't think they're "insane" for doing so. Most people who use LSD or psilocybin come out of the experience with no lasting harm. Albert Hoffman, who discovered LSD, used it into his 80s with no health problems. (He lived to be 102.)
However, if you spend significant time in a hipster enclave (e.g. Williamsburg) you see the long-term effects for people of certain mental patterns. The problem is that the people who are most attracted to frequent psychedelic use are also those, in my opinion, most vulnerable to the mental problems that this lifestyle can exacerbate.
Cocaine and alcohol are extremely dangerous, but everyone knows that. I think the danger of psychedelics (which are biologically non-toxic) is that they can appeal to an experience-chasing mentality, and that they sometimes become entwined with a pattern of self-medication for an existing mental problem that would be better treated by a real psychiatrist.
I've altered my consciousness a lot over the course of my life, and won't get into details (real name) but I haven't used any of these drugs for years. I don't even drink, except for an occasional beer with dinner. Drugs are not necessary. The way I think of it is that altered consciousness is like a wilderness. Meditation is like riding your bike into it, in the sense that if you're not in shape, you won't go very far but you'll be able to go back out. Keep riding, and you'll be able to go deeper over time. Psychedelics are more like hitch-hiking. You catch a ride, can go deep into the thick of it, and end up with no idea where you've landed. You hope you can find a safe ride back. Most of the time, you get a ride back and you're fine, but the probability of disaster is not zero.
Interesting reply. I like your hitch-hiking metaphor, but I would extend it by saying "sometimes you decide life is better in the new place and never choose to return, or do so only sporadically". Certainly this mirrors people's travel in the physical realm more closely, and it is hard to deny that all forms of experience leave lasting impressions on us...
While I certainly respect your experience, views and choices, I would highlight the fact that you are looking back upon experiences of the past and the human memory is a prickly beast. Further, wherever you make the statement that something is "not necessary", it's very much loaded. I think it's sometimes difficult to empathise with or second-guess other peoples' (like your former self's) life goals, experience, motivations-of-the-moment and general situation.
Remember: children and many free thinking types, such as artists and hackers, can be largely motivated by curiosity, and that's a motivational asset that it's probably fair to say is rarer than hen's teeth in the adult population.
Also, quite unlike some foreign cultures that celebrate serious schizophrenia (eg. India) and other more evident conditions, today in the west the dominant perspective on insanity seems to be largely defined by two factors.
(1) An outgrowth of the historic western response (ie. 'mentally ill' people are 'treated' to return to what is assumed to be a preferable 'norm', or otherwise doped-up on antipsychotics that can prevent them from fully functioning)... the net message here is 'something is wrong with you', and 'the rest of society is right'.
(2) Led by big pharma, aggressive Western-led drug marketing, and post-industrial-era 9-5 schedules (not to talk of related issues of mortgages, debt, lack of free time/exercise/social outlet/access to daylight) loads of people IMHO spuriously consider themselves to have depression, ADD, or some other 'illness' that in the past was either not present in society or fell in to the regular realm of human experience. Now I'm not dismissing that some people really have extreme mental situations that can cause social or personal problems, but I am saying that a lot of them could probably improve just as much if not more by moving, switching routines, eating differently, exercising more, or being allowed by their relevant authority figures to operate outside of the artificially imposed constraints of an Orwellian post-industrial-era clockbound mass-psychological consensual hallucination under high velocity, socially charged 24x7 multi-channel surveillance of themselves, by themselves/employer/school/state/cult/etc.
(TLDR;) Let's just cut to the chase here: often, these people can start to realise the possibilities outside of their current mode of experience by taking a psychoactive drug, and it can do them real good, or at least provide food for thought. Necessary? Let each be their own judge.
When I say that psychedelics are "not necessary", I mean exactly that. I don't mean to say that they're evil, or even that they do more harm than good, because I don't think either is true. I think they're one path to something that can be attained through more difficult but, in the long term, safer means.
I don't know where you get the idea that Indian culture celebrates severe schizophrenia. It doesn't. In fact, the contentions some people have that schizophrenia is an asset in other cultures is untrue. That belief comes from a time in which this illness was poorly understood and sloppily (read: too easily) diagnosed in other societies. In all cultures, actual schizophrenia is a disadvantage. However, having traits often classified as schizotypal can be an advantage in some cultures.
> I don't know where you get the idea that Indian culture celebrates severe schizophrenia
It's a near-direct quote from an Austrian mental health professional I encountered in Indonesia some months back. Also, it is generally supported by the rather broader minded approach to mystics and non-mainline-society people's physical presence on the street and within broader society that is immediately evident to the traveller in India, as well as in other developing world countries.
> ... in other cultures ... in all cultures ...
Big claims. I would wager that you have not spent much time living longer-term in cultures significantly distinct from the west.
One is a variety of spiritual practice pursued by healthy people seeking divine communion, enlightenment, or some other desirable but hard-to-attain spiritual state. The other is a problem, usually with the physical brain, that harms the ability to perceive reality and often causes immense suffering for the person who has it.
It was mushrooms in a hotel room in Amsterdam several years ago. I took them with my then-girlfriend - her trip was okay but mine was awful. The visuals, the thoughts, the emotions all felt terrible and when it really hit me I couldn't stop panicking.
At the time, I thought that was it: a bad trip but glad it was over. But over the following months I developed a chronic anxiety triggered by all sorts of things. First time I noticed it was next time I was in a hotel room; I had a panic attack and had to call an ambulance as I didn't know what the fuck was going on with my head. Then, other things became triggers. If I happened to be thinking of either of the hotel room incidents and felt anxious, then whatever else was present at the time would become a trigger for the anxiety. This included internal thought-triggers and external visual and situational ones. Over the next couple of years I had panic attacks in all sorts of places, sometimes seemingly apropos of nothing.
Anyway after a couple of years I managed to get it somewhat under control using a combination of anti-depressant medication and cognitive behavioural therapy. But even now there are some situational triggers that will make me exceedingly anxious, and earlier this month - after several years 'clean' of attacks - I couldn't hold off the anxiety and had another really large attack. Though I was very stressed about something else so I suppose my background levels of anxiety were high anyway.
Before all this happened, I was a pretty relaxed and chilled out kind of guy. It makes me sad that I'm never going to get back to that state of mind. When I look back at recordings or writings of the pre-mushrooms me, he seems almost like a stranger. It's very odd.
This of course is not necessarily a typical experience on mushrooms, and I suppose I was predisposed to this somehow, but it was a very unpleasant way to find this out.
Something similar happened to me, but with weed. I was experienced with LSD, mushrooms, and marijuana, but one night, after watching Fight Club while high, I couldn't get the thought out of my head that my buddy (also high, who had suggested we watch the film) was merely a projection of my alternate personality. At first I found this odd thought funny and I brushed it aside; but it kept recurring and it turned into a multi-hour panic attack. Like you said, I used to think there was a "before" me, and an "after" me. It truly changed my life. I struggled with severe anxiety and panic attacks for many years afterward. To some degree, I still do.
I used to think of that night as the cause, but I later noticed that I had been building up to some kind of "breakdown" for months. I had always been a bit more tense, a bit more worried, and more sensitive than most. I had a deep belief that, if I tried hard enough, I could prevent bad things from happening. This sense of control is at the root of anxiety disorders. Most people don't think bad things will happen to them, so they lose no sleep about it. Those of us with anxiety issues are just the opposite: we're constantly trying to prevent and prepare for the worst, even though the majority of those feared events will never materialize.
Anyway, if you haven't already done so, I suggest that you not think about the mushrooms as being the cause but rather the trigger. Once anxiety attacks begin, they are very difficult to control. It wasn't the mushrooms specifically; rather, it was the anxiety that caused the downward spiral, as the conditioned fear response gains strength through repetition. (There's a load of good publications about this.) In short, there aren't two versions of you ("pre-mushroom you" and "post-mushroom you"); you just had a serious transformative experience.
I'm sorry to hear of your similarly terrifying experience. The mental model you use to describe it is interesting though, and makes me consider that the narratives we (in the general sense) formulate to represent our lives are an important tool in processing them. Will definitely have to think about this a bit more.
Out of curiosity, may I ask how you dealt with your experience in the following months afterward?
At first, I didn't deal with it very well because I didn't realize what was happening. I thought I had gone crazy, or was in the process of going crazy. Back then, the Internet wasn't as helpful as it is today (or harmful, depending upon how you want to look at it), or I would have Googled it; but I had heard about panic attacks through film and TV (The Sopranos, for example) and I eventually dragged myself into a bookstore to browse the self-help section (something the "before" me never would have done), and there I stumbled across books about anxiety disorders. After a few months of suffering, this was enough to motivate me to see a doctor. Of course, the doctor was familiar with anxiety, and suggested that I see a psychiatrist. This totally blew my mind. A psychiatrist? I was "normal" just a few months before. I had never even considered seeing a psychiatrist for any reason, so I brushed it off, thinking that I just needed to get it under control by myself.
So I spent the next year reading about anxiety, going through workbooks, taking supplements (another thing I had never done before), and trying to "gain control." Turns out, trying to wrest control is a bad way to approach anxiety; it imposes impossible expectations upon yourself--"If only I were smarter and stronger I wouldn't have these panic attacks. I just need to get it together." This kind of thinking makes anxiety worse. And it got worse.
Eventually though, I was able to find a better approach that involved accepting anxiety as a part of my life. I was inspired by something I had read about Zen Buddhism, so I began trying to view my anxiety as an old friend, my old torturer, my own brand of human suffering. Believe it or not, this worked. I began to intentionally do things that made me anxious. Axiety is much less powerful once you acknowledge that its roots lie in the brain, in the evolutionary drive to protect oneself from danger, and you can't consciously control it. All you can do is acknowledge it and move on, or "Feel the fear and do it anyway." I forced myself to reengage in life. I never stayed home when feeling anxious (I found this was the worst possible thing I could do); I accepted invitations to parties, I traveled, I enrolled in college, I moved.
But I continued having recurring episodes of severe anxiety that would leave me crippled for weeks: I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat, I had difficulty doing simple things like grocery shopping. So, at the urging of my family, I saw a psychiatrist (who was not helpful at all, as all she wanted to do was find out whether someone had touched my peepee when I was a boy. Hint: no one had), a neurologist (who was very helpful and very knowledgeable about anxiety), and a new primary doctor. My doctors coordinated to find a suitable medication, an SSRI. With this, coupled with my learned coping skills, I eventually began to feel "normal" again. A few years later, after experiencing no severe anxiety, I dropped the medication and was able to move on with my life.
Marijuana, yep, been there, heart constriction, crucifixion level pain, feeling like I was dying. This happened several times in my early 20s -- solution, stopped smoking ;-)
and started meditating. That alone stripped loads of baggage. Urban areas have plenty of zen centers and the like. A lot of crap is self created, bad habit oriented behavior, like sitting hunched before the screens.
I think a lot of the paranoia and other negative effects from pot use are symptoms of overdose, and are the result of either smoking too much or too frequently.
Taking fewer hits, smoking weaker weed, and/or smoking less often can help.
Unfortunately, way too many people who use psychedelics are both unprepared for the experience and don't know how to use them constructively.
Many, if not most people go through their lives mostly unconsciously, with very little introspection or understanding of their subconscious. Many of them have serious issues and demons from their childhood or other trauma that they've never dealt with and do everything within their power to avoid thinking about.
Is it really a surprise that when they take a substance which has the effect of powerfully bringing subconscious content to consciousness, a substance they've never been taught how to use properly, that some of them are unable to deal with and are frightened of what they find?
Too many people take psychedelics with little clue as to what to expect, or with intention to just "party" or "see some trippy colors", not realizing just how powerful these substances are, and not realizing that they should be treated with respect and prepared for properly (we could say a lot about set and setting here).
Furthermore, psychedelic users rarely know what to do with or how to integrate what they learn after the experience is over. This lack of integration and refusal to deal with negative as well as positive emotions and subconscious content can also cause many problems.
This is why psychedelic use is best done under the guidance of experienced therapists or in a shamanic context where the tripper can get help both during and after the trip.
I'm not saying that doing or not doing any of the above is what led to the bad trip you experienced, or to the anxiety attacks afterwards. I don't know you or anything about how you approached the experience to hazard a guess. However, it would not surprise me if some of these issues were at play here.
"At the time, I thought that was it: a bad trip but glad it was over. But over the following months I developed a chronic anxiety triggered by all sorts of things."
That is just a bad trip. The problem is that if it brings up a lot of issues and you can't properly integrate them then you will have chronic anxiety issues, and any resulting physical brain changes would be from the chronic anxiety rather than from the psilocybin itself.
The normal advice when this happens is to do the drug again and to try to resolve whatever issues came up. But if you're on anti-depressants right now then that's not really an option, and you also probably wouldn't want to do that without a more experience guide.
Nice to know that several years of chronic anxiety problems and panic attacks was "just" a bad trip.
I'm not on anti-depressants and haven't been for years, but your advice seems completely bizarre. Why on earth would I risk taking the mushrooms again after it fucked me up so much the first time? There's no way I'm ever touching them again.
"Nice to know that several years of chronic anxiety problems and panic attacks was 'just' a bad trip."
It's roughly analogous to if you get PTSD after getting raped. That doesn't mean that rape causes chronic anxiety per se, even though it's a common outcome. I'm not trying to say that mushrooms didn't have an adverse effect on your life, only that it wasn't due to psilocybin directly altering your brain.
"I'm not on anti-depressants and haven't been for years, but your advice seems completely bizarre."
That advice wasn't for you specifically, I'm just saying that it's the standard advice. But it normally applies for people who have had a bad trip a week or two ago, not several years ago. The idea is that the only way to come out of it is to follow whatever you were going through until you get to the logical conclusion.
Here are a few guides in general to dealing with 'bad trips':
No problem. If your interested in psychedelics as a catalyst for personal development, Neal Goldsmith's book Psychedelic Healing is pretty good. If you ever wanted to go back and revisit the experience it's one of the books you'd want to read first, along with James Fadiman's book is called the Psychedelic Explorer's Guide. These substances are reasonably safe and even beneficial, but only if you have a few books worth of knowledge before partaking and actually follow best practices.
^ It happens, but it is rare. I'm really sorry about that. Psychedelics, and Mushrooms in particular, have a very long folk history of helping with these sorts of problems, and there are many emerging studies that are now being carried out at NYU to better understand why. They have certainly helped me, and continue to do so during troublesome moments in life.
hmmmm, yes, have been there, a couple of "hell" trips on shrooms. The worst was the realization that not only was I in hell at that moment, but that I had been all along in hell, from the beginning of time, without realizing it. Tough night to say the least; my girlfriend meanwhile was in great spirits -- everyone is on their own trip.
Anyway, sounds like you've found some ways to address the anxiety. Life isn't easy, had you never taken shrooms, well it wouldn't be your life. There may be some transformation that comes from the anxiety -- Eckhart Tolle, for example, suffered from severe anxiety and depression for years, and then, one night the weight of the world was gone. If we could all be so lucky.
To give your misery some company, even without drugs it is common enough that people come upon "broken" mental states chronic recurring severe anxiety that are triggered by otherwise mundane reminders (such as a creepy icon of a video game).
These conditions can be initiated by using books or movies to reach dark ideas, or even aimless or subconscious thinking (too much thinking time or idleness).
I find it hard to imagine someone reading this document and coming away thinking that taking psychedelics are a good idea, if they have any sense of stability in their lives. (for someone with nothing to lose and little hope for better, I can imagine drug consequences not being worse)
On the contrary. The more stable and integrated your life and psyche are, the greater the chances of having a good experience.
Psychedelics often bring a lot of subconscious, repressed content to consciousness, and it is mentally stable, healthy, and integrated individuals who are in the best position to deal with that content.
I would strongly caution unstable individuals, or people who are experiencing or being treated for mental illness to stay far away from psychedelics (unless you're using them under the supervision of an experienced therapist -- and even then, that's very controversial).
Several of the hallucinations described can be reached by meditating.
And there are hallucination types due to drugs that aren't in there. I've seen crazy stuff, like people's neck stretching for tens of meters and their head coming right in front me although they were on the other side of the street. I did stop taking drugs, nearly 20 years ago, after that one did happen to me.
