i had mushrooms a little while back and it was an amazing experience i saw energy everything was one and alive even the clouds im glad i had that experience im a better person now
washingtonpost.com Drug's Mystical Properties Confirmed 36 Area Adults Took Psilocybin in Study; Many Called Experience Spiritual By David Brown Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 11, 2006; A08 Psilocybin, the active ingredient of "magic mushrooms," expands the mind. After a thousand years of use, that's now scientifically official. The chemical promoted a mystical experience in two-thirds of people who took it for the first time, according to a new study. One-third rated a session with psilocybin as the "single most spiritually significant" experience of their lives. Another third put it in the top five. The study, published online today in the journal Psychopharmacology, is the first randomized, controlled trial of a substance used for centuries in Mexico and Central America to produce mystical insights. Almost no research on a psychedelic drug in human subjects has been done in this country since the 1960s. It confirms what both shamans and hippies have long said -- taking psilocybin is a scary, reality-bending and occasionally life-changing experience. The researchers say they hope the experiment opens a door to the study of a class of compounds that alter human perception and erode the boundaries of self -- at least in some users. They hope it will provide new insight into how the brain works and what neurochemical events underlie moments of mystical rapture. If the generally positive effects of the drug are confirmed by other studies, the research is likely to raise the question of whether people should be allowed access to psilocybin for self-improvement or recreation. Rigorous study of these substances has been shunned since the 1960s, although it is not legally prohibited. Research on them was a casualty of the muddled mix of science and advocacy by people like Timothy Leary, the LSD guru and former Harvard psychologist once called the "most dangerous man in America" by President Richard M. Nixon. "Our study has shown we can conduct a study of this type safely, and that the effects produced are really quite interesting," said Roland R. Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who ran the experiment. "There is a clear neuroscience agenda to understand those effects, and clear clinical applications that could be pursued." Other brain researchers hailed the experiment as much for the fact that it was done at all as for its findings. "These are some of the most potent compounds we know of that can change consciousness," said David E. Nichols, a professor of medicinal chemistry at Purdue University who has studied the effects of psychedelics on rats and cultured cells. "It's kind of peculiar they have just been kind of sitting on the shelf for 40 years. There is no other class of biologically active substances I am aware of that have been ignored like that." The study, which involved 36 middle-aged adults from the Baltimore-Washington area, was conducted over five years. The subjects were chosen from 135 people who answered newspaper ads. All said they were members of a religious organization, practiced meditation or took part in other spiritual activity. The study was designed to minimize the effects of anticipation and group enthusiasm, which might color a person's response. It also sought to examine the delayed, as well as immediate, effects of the drug. The volunteers were randomly assigned to take either 30 milligrams of psilocybin (chemically synthesized, not extracted from mushrooms) or 40 milligrams of methylphenidate, the stimulant sold as Ritalin. The sessions lasted eight hours in a room where a person could listen to music, relax on a couch with eyeshades or talk with two monitors always in attendance. Each subject then took the other drug in a different session two months later. Of the 36 people, 22 had a "complete" mystical experience as judged by several question-based scales used for rating such experiences. Two-thirds judged it to be among their top five life experiences, equal to the birth of a first child or death of a parent. Two months after a session, the people who had taken psilocybin reported small but significant positive changes in behavior and attitudes compared with those who had taken Ritalin. One-third of the subjects, however, said they experienced "strong or extreme" fear at some point in the hours after they took the hallucinogen. Four people said the entire session was dominated by anxiety or psychological struggle. Nichols thinks that last finding should give people pause. "I think these drugs are potentially very dangerous," he said. "I would be very disappointed if in any sense these results were used to encourage recreational use of these compounds. I wouldn't want to take responsibility for anyone under unmonitored conditions coming up with those feelings." Alan Leshner, who headed the National Institute on Drug Abuse for seven years and now leads the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was both wary and excited about psilocybin's reported effects. "If it is ultimately shown to be benign but enriches people's lives, who could object to that? But I don't have that level of confidence at this point, given the paucity of research on it," he said. A scholar of mysticism, G. William Barnard of Southern Methodist University, suspects that most mystical traditions would not object to the idea that a chemical could allow a person to tune into a preexisting state of consciousness, usually ignored, just as fasting, prayer, yoga and other activities can. But there is less enthusiasm for the idea that this kind of research will unlock the mechanism of mystical insight. "Most people I suspect would say that the neurochemistry is not the full cause of these experiences," he said. © 2006 The Washington Post Company
you cant fully explain it in words but for me it was complete nirvana it was joy and sorry at the same time there were no dualities light beams were following from my fingers my lips literally felt like the river i got scared because i didnt think i was every gonna come back lol i was speaking mystically and as i started to make myself vomit the plant because i knew it was to powerful i didnt want the knowledge i wanted to not know and come back to this dimension i started to feel like a tribal warrior exercising and going outside to watch the ants and the clouds i know that i wont be doing the shrooms a lot its too much power maybe once a year is good enough maybe longer lol god bless
thats awesome man i can't seem to trip on shroomies ate an eighth all my friends did to... they tripped, i didn't.
Wow thats a trip my friend who was there ate the same amount and didnt feel anything either i think its cuz of different metabolisms or something
i was living in Oregon on the lands of an old nonfunctioning farm. i discovered a few shrooms and ate them. after a little time had passed, out of the corner of my eye i noticed a small brown dude with dreads dancing a merry little jig. he smiled at me with a very bright smile, friendly but with just a hint of feral menace. then he disappeared. i got up from where i was sitting in the grass and went to where he had been dancing and lo and behold ... shrooms! then a little distance away he appeared again, performed the same dance, smiled his friendly but feral smile and disappeared. again i went to his dancing spot and yep! you guessed it! more shrooms! i followed him around the field like this for quite awhile (time lost meaning, of course) and by the time the sun was cresting towards noon my shirt, which i was using like a sack, was nicely full of shrooms. YAY for the Mushroom Man!
Nice! Psychedelic drugs are amazing in how they can open our eyes to joys of life that we never even knew were there or acknowledged. And I love all of the epiphanies and revelations I get each time I do them. The best part is that after doing enough of them it becomes easier to have these revelations or find new joys without them. Oh and of course they're fun as hell.
its funny, sorcery as far as I understand the translation means pharmacy or pharma. there is no doubt in my mind drugs are used as a mystical experience, if you werent high, many here would argue that people cling to god when they can not understand something, though as soon as you equate marijuana or mushrooms, or peyote...its now a mystical event a key to unlocking the secerets of the universe. ive been down the road of mixing chems, back in my raver days ...many many times I would have an understanding greater then ???? after a while I started recording what I was thinking by pen...but could never read it the next day so I recorderd my self on tape.... we think everything makes sence on mush man. its afun trip but thats all it is a trip. peyote is supposed to be spiritual...its sacred to the navajo not so much spiritual ... its used to bring unity to a tribe....yeah Ill be pretty united with anyone I take a "trip" with. ....but even after I rant.. this navajo man once told me....the secret is. dont play with it, PRAY with it. so maybe theres something to the mumbo jombo after all
I don't like to call it a spiritual experience. There are chemical reactions taking place in your brain that make you perceive things that aren't there and feel things that you wouldn't have, but there's nothing material about it. Religious people think that it brings them closer to their God, but it doesn't actually. A religious person will think about God all day, will look for God, and often they will claim to have seen signs of God. They obsess about it so much that they end up tricking themselves into seeing and feeling things that aren't there. The drugs just make that a lot easier. Again, there's nothing material about it.
I love that, dont ya jusst luuuv that? Thats some deep seriously intentional happening right there. Magnifique.
Smart dude. Excellent!! Always keep an open mind. There is so much we do not know. and...Stabby sez: You are entitled to that stance but I heartily disagree. Now, you need to understand that I am a cleric in a non-deity based church. Our tenets believe that humankind has an innate spirituality built in. I'll not condemn any who use these drugs and "see" their deities or have epiphanies. (just keep the damned fanatics away from me) If your quest is to become a better more enlightened human through deity based belief, nothing wrong with that. What I think some fail to understand is the use of psychedelics for spiritual purposes is not what you see or hear...it's what you FEEL. Hallucinations (or visions) and hearing voices is the chemical reaction on the brain but, as I understand it from my mentors, is they are a teaching tool used to evoke self questioning and introspection. The FEELING of being "one with the all" or "one with god" and experiencing the emotions of love, compassion, etc. is why these drugs have been passed down through the ages. Halu-halu-cinations, trails and such are just fluff. Fun as hell but still fluff. JMHO...after all what do I know? When I was a teen I wanted to grow up to be Mr. Natural! Zen
We actually agree. Drugs can be used for, like you said, self questioning and introspection and heighten and distort what we feel. If that's what spirituality is for you, then I agree that psychedelics are spiritual. I was speaking strictly about theism and "seeing God".
