4 ms·

I see this idea a lot, and in the main, I wholly agree with the understanding that it's personal work and not drugs which help people develop their understandin

I see this idea a lot, and in the main, I wholly agree with the understanding that it's personal work and not drugs which help people develop their understanding of the world. At the same time, this mode of saying "at most" undercuts the actual value of a psychedelic experience: that kind of experience is so profound that I often liken it to discovering sex for the first time. Knowing how to bring yourself and/ or a partner into some state or other isn't in itself useful, it's awkward and confusing to become initiated into that practice, and there are a myriad of ways where becoming sexually activated is violent and traumatic. But done well a) these experiences can be fun/useful as ends in themselves and b) these experiences are often the ones which open up entire realms of possibility for our minds and bodies. For instance, without a psychedelic context I certainly would not have had a way of parsing the effects of kundalini yoga, and I might not have even been inclined to work in that direction if I didn't have a first hand understanding of how dramatically our physiology can so directly impact our perceptions. And I find the people who discount the profound impact of initiation into that realm of experience almost tautologically fall into two camps: people who have moved past psychedelics as a mode (which is a legitimate and good mode, in my epereince) and people who have never had psychedelic experiences (which is also a wholly legitimate way to be in the world). The thing is, the first camp often seems (at least to me) to understate the actual impact of psychedelia in their development and the second camp doesn't have the personal experience to make those claims at all. While I am happy at your personal development and ability to enter states of bliss or ecstasy without psychedelic drugs, you may consider that this general bend of argumentation (that the drugs aren't valuable and may be unhealthy in general in this movement) is just as much of a shortcut as thinking that the psychedelics in themselves can lead to some sort of enlightenment.

aksss 5y ago
I think this is a very appropriate comparison. At risk of forcing the analogy, there's some balance between (dis)trusting society at large with the liberation of attitudes towards psychedelics while maintaining some guardrails against the objectification, or cheapening, or hyping (miracle cure-all style) or even institutionalization of the experience/tooling. Society seems to be very tolerant of the risks/consequences of liberalized sexual morality. I'm not in any way interested in judging that as a positive or negative right now, just the observation that a) there are consequences; b) Western society has given priority to the benefits over the consequences; c) the boundaries and dimensions of the issue, benefits, consequences are still being explored; d) that exploration has largely been hands-off and organic, addressing problems in an arguably reactive posture. With psychedelics I think the risks/consequences are potentially greater and so would say simply as a comparison, societies need to be a little more careful, a little less reckless with this one. I instinctively project my own positive experiences with psychedelics onto others and so imagine positive outcomes to be more accessible or certain for society at large. This instinct - I know from observation as I've grown older and have seen more of the world and its inhabitants - needs to be checked. There are a lot of broken people out there, a lot of vulnerable people, a lot of self-interested influences that are either uncaring or malign. I have trouble articulating my full thoughts on this, but I don't think Western and particularly US culture has done a good job managing mental health and particularly in fostering positive mental health during formative years of human development. Not specifically talking about acute diagnosable disorders, but even the level of chronic anxiety, depression, and hopelessness that is experienced and amplified when passed cyclically over generations. The causes are interesting but beyond the scope of my comment, though it does influence my skepticism about throwing a grenade of recreational psychedelics into the gen-pop and letting it work itself out. I know someone is bound to say that nobody is talking about recreational psychedelics in a conversation about therapeutical use, but I would say that's precisely my starting point - a) it's hard to avoid more recreational use of psychedelics when normalizing it socially even in a clinical setting; b) figuring out how and where to set up appropriate guardrails should be deliberate; c) the experience with sexual liberation can probably inform the conversation in valuable ways, particularly in a critical approach. This is not an easy problem to solve in a secular, diverse, free-market democracy since the levers of influence are less centralized and arguably incentivized towards disruption, live experimentation, and deconstruction.

aksss 5y ago

I think this is a very appropriate comparison. At risk of forcing the analogy, there's some balance between (dis)trusting society at large with the liberation of attitudes towards psychedelics while maintaining some guardrails against the objectification, or cheapening, or hyping (miracle cure-all style) or even institutionalization of the experience/tooling. Society seems to be very tolerant of the risks/consequences of liberalized sexual morality. I'm not in any way interested in judging that as a positive or negative right now, just the observation that a) there are consequences; b) Western society has given priority to the benefits over the consequences; c) the boundaries and dimensions of the issue, benefits, consequences are still being explored; d) that exploration has largely been hands-off and organic, addressing problems in an arguably reactive posture. With psychedelics I think the risks/consequences are potentially greater and so would say simply as a comparison, societies need to be a little more careful, a little less reckless with this one. I instinctively project my own positive experiences with psychedelics onto others and so imagine positive outcomes to be more accessible or certain for society at large. This instinct - I know from observation as I've grown older and have seen more of the world and its inhabitants - needs to be checked. There are a lot of broken people out there, a lot of vulnerable people, a lot of self-interested influences that are either uncaring or malign. I have trouble articulating my full thoughts on this, but I don't think Western and particularly US culture has done a good job managing mental health and particularly in fostering positive mental health during formative years of human development. Not specifically talking about acute diagnosable disorders, but even the level of chronic anxiety, depression, and hopelessness that is experienced and amplified when passed cyclically over generations. The causes are interesting but beyond the scope of my comment, though it does influence my skepticism about throwing a grenade of recreational psychedelics into the gen-pop and letting it work itself out. I know someone is bound to say that nobody is talking about recreational psychedelics in a conversation about therapeutical use, but I would say that's precisely my starting point - a) it's hard to avoid more recreational use of psychedelics when normalizing it socially even in a clinical setting; b) figuring out how and where to set up appropriate guardrails should be deliberate; c) the experience with sexual liberation can probably inform the conversation in valuable ways, particularly in a critical approach. This is not an easy problem to solve in a secular, diverse, free-market democracy since the levers of influence are less centralized and arguably incentivized towards disruption, live experimentation, and deconstruction.