The Psychedelic Transhumanists

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The original version of this article can be found at H+ Magazine.  It is largely an attempt to subvert the materialism I see running rampant in the transhumanism community by reminding them how the last hundred years of philosophy stomps on that kind of nonsense.  It is also a self-referential game, in which virtualization is discussed virtually…  Enjoy! 

 

Transhumanism in a fortune cookie:  the familiar human world is just one point along a continuum of evolution, and we have an unprecedented capacity to participate in that process.  And yet, the future being as slippery as it is, there are as many visions for how this might occur as there are visionaries to guess at it.  Computer scientists tend to have one transhumanism, genetic engineers another.  However, coherent themes emerge for those who have taken it upon themselves to make a sweeping survey of human inquiry, integrating a keen reading of the vectors of our technology with postmodern insight into the nature of mind.

Some of these thinkers have  been catalyzed by the psychedelic experience — in a way, the most informative window into a world beyond the human that we have yet discovered.  They understand the message of psychedelics and the message of technology to converge on the horizon of a deeper reading of reality that recognizes mind and matter as dimensions of the same truth — a truth for which language has ill-prepared us.

The ranks of these “psychedelic transhumanists” include legendary rebels like Timothy Leary, wise fools like Terence McKenna, cultural commentators like Erik Davis and Mark Pesce, and avant-psychopharmacologists like David Pearce.  Hailing from disparate knowledge domains, they nonetheless share hyperliterate and uniquely discerning intellect. As unusual as their arguments may be to anyone trained in more conventional models of reality, they nonetheless obey a rigorous scientific discipline in their own way, augmenting empirical knowledge with the established insights of 20th-century psychology and philosophy.

Their common vision shares much with the rest of the transhuman community, including an embrace of technology and science as both potent and inevitable; an evolutionary model of the universe and humanity; a sense of the human organism as something that can be tinkered with and expanded; a recognition of drugs as a technology that can dramatically reinvent identity; and a playful challenging of fixed boundaries. In many ways they demonstrate the seed of transhumanism in this moment by exemplifying self-revision and the reevaluation of assumptions as an open-ended and ongoing process.  And along the way, they tatter the mechanistic control fantasies we have held onto in spite of our most sophisticated inquiries.

Among these visionaries, we find a general agreement on the emergence of emotional machines, but from a more non-dual perspective of the human as both emotional and machine-like, and a recognition of both inner and outer realities.  They tend to critique philosophies that consider mind a mere epiphenomenon, or that fail to recognize the role of the speculator in speculation.

They see technology as ideas, and ideas as technology.  They question our fanaticism for control in light of progress’s runaway complexity, and remind us of the stubborn persistence of the unconscious, the body, and the other.  They insistently remind us to see the evolution of humanity and beyond as much in terms of qualia as quanta, and paint the portrait of a future sensitive to psychological, spiritual, ethical, and biological concerns.

The distinctions between this vision and the more common idea of a technological singularity are easily distilled.  In their own words, presented as a “virtual conversation” of transcripts and correspondences, here are the core messages of a transhumanist vision informed by the psychedelic experience…

 

Medium is message, and information is psychoactive.

Information is a more fundamental substrate of reality, an implicate order.  “Pattern” replaces “matter.”

Timothy Leary:  I’m a great follower of a man named Marshall MacLuhan who wrote those wonderful books about communication.  He said that if you want to change a culture, if you want to change yourself, if you want to change religion, then change the medium, the mode of communication.  He said that Gutenberg created Protestantism where he had the mass-assembled book, where everybody can read.  And now the new form of communication is electronic…

Terence McKenna:  The realization that has flowered in the wake of the internet and the rise of cybernetics is that everything is made of information.  Information is the primary datum of being.  Concepts like time and space and energy are orders of magnitude removed from the present at hand when compared with a concept like information.  Every iota, every bit of information that passes through us, changes us.

Mark Pesce:  If you took a picture of this room in 1990 and you took a picture of it today, everything would look exactly the same and yet everything is completely different.  Because in 1990 we didn’t have this layer of bits that’s flowing seamlessly among all of us. And it’s changed us.  It’s radically sped up the way we deal with information in society.  And every bit of information that passes through you changes you. You cannot be unaffected in any way by any bit of information.  So the internet is acting as this enormous accelerator…

Erik Davis:  Information came to be seen as an abstract, almost transcendental stuff that could “circulate unchanged among different material substrates.” Once we begin to believe that information is more essential than material forms, we vacate the old cosmos defined by presence and absence, entering a world characterized by the binary feedback of pattern and randomness, signal and noise.

This accelerating knowledge leads to widespread acceptance of all reality as virtual…and that it has always been this way.

The transhuman age is simply making this inescapably obvious. Aldous Huxley’s descriptive “far antipodes of the mind” (He used the phrase in a discussion of his mescaline experiences) and their real ecologies is the intellectual progenitor of The Matrix, and of a pragmatic relationship to the questions of ontology.

McKenna:  The minute I understood the concept [of virtual reality] I knew…that this would be the next great thing.  As a tool of art.  As a tool for leading us beyond the notion that we are a hive society of advanced primates, because that’s how we visually appear to the empirical point of view.  That’s an out-of-context description of what we are.  It’s like a schematic or an aerial map.  What we really are is a community of mind, knitted together by codes and symbols, intuitions, aspirations, histories, hopes — the invisible world of the human experience is far more real to us than the visible world, which is little more than a kind of stage or screen on which we move. The purpose of VR is to show us aspects of reality that are not artificial, but that are fields of data not ordinarily coordinated by ordinary perception.

I see virtual reality not as a way of escaping the notion of empirical reality, but as a way of re-portraying invisible levels of the given world that are very vital and important to us:  how we see flows of energy, how we understand complex economies, how we understand the fractal hierarchies of nature. 

What is already co-present with three-dimensional reality is being literalized….but being literalized in timescales that make the nature of the game apparent to all but the dullest among us.  I mean after all, we have always lived in virtual realities, ever since we abandoned nomadism and defined a polis and a wilderness.

Davis:  Media have long sought to create immersive spaces of fictional reality: Baroque cathedrals, 19th century panoramas, even, perhaps, the Paleolithic caves of Lascaux or Altamira. Today, the accelerating perceptual technologies of media are on a collision course with cognitive science and its understanding of how the human nervous system produces the real-time matrix we take for ordinary space-time.

Pesce:  My first experience of virtual reality happened in 1990 and required absolutely no technology except about 500 micrograms of LSD-25.  And what I found in this virtual world, the thing that I must have suspected I would find in this virtual world, wasn’t an artificial Tron-like environment. It wasn’t something that was entirely artificial. What I beheld in that environment was an image of the planet, as if I was cruising above it in a spaceship. And I knew that part of my own destiny as connected with virtual reality wasn’t to escape into another dimension, but to find a way to make real to us the things that we can’t always see, because we exist at a level of scale, of experience, that hides them from us. 

Where we’re going, the simulated and the real are going to get really blurry.  And we don’t have any tools of mind.  Western culture, which is based on this objective external reality — it’s not hard, it’s all become very soft, and it’s all flowing together. So we need to now start to find ways of describing what’s going on.  And so what we need to do — I found in my own investigations — is to take a look at cultures that describe the world magically, that understand that perception shapes what you are, and you shape what you see.  And that they’re not separate areas, they’re not separate domains, and you have to consider them as a whole.

My own explorations had led me to understand that in fact, in a world where anything you want is true, the only way to deal with this is by learning how to deal with your will.  Dealing with your will is what magic has always, in all cultures, always been about.  This is why the shaman doesn’t go insane when the world just disappears — they’re ready for it.  Because they understand that where they are isn’t bound up in their idea of the world.

 

Prioritizing information over matter makes the issue of machine sapience irrelevant.

Consciousness of the other is an intractable mystery even between two people.  It’s a mystery we can sidestep, if we grant awareness by degree.

Davis:  I think that we’re going to find ourselves relating interpersonally with machines, whether or not they’re actually alive or conscious in a way that scientists can debate about, we’re going to be interacting with things that have those qualities.

That’s going to change the way we’re going to experience life and other people.  I think we’ll come to meet future artificial intelligences in the personae of animated characters, on a pop culture level. There’s an element of animism in technology now that’s going to increase — in scientists exploring artificial life, kids interacting with intelligent dolls, in the relationship between ecology, technology and the environment — it all comes down to a growing element of animism, throwing usback to being Palaeolithic man living in a world of animated nature.

Pesce:  Each one of us grew up in a world where people and pets were invested with a certain internal reality that bricks and blocks obviously did not possess. This is not true for our children.

With Furby we have crossed a line in the sand, and there’s no going back: the current generation of children, comfortable with the in-betweeness of Furby, have a growing expectation that the entire material world will become increasingly responsive to them as they learn to master it.

 

The emergence of “artificial” intelligence is a process of symbiosis, transcendence via inclusion, and the posthuman integrates the human, rather than dissociating from it.

Evolution proceeds by including prior forms in novel structures of higher complexity…likewise, the biological will likely be taken up into the embrace of intelligent machines.  There is no precedent in evolutionary history for the “leaving behind” of evolutionary precursors.  Bacteria and barter still exist, both independently and as elements of more complex organisms and economies.

Pesce:  These are prosthetics, these machines, or perhaps, looking the other way around, we are theirs, but neither can really exist without the other.  So this “rise of artificial intelligence” is a misapprehension.  The rise of intelligence, however — that seems historically inevitable.

Intelligence cannot be made.  Intelligence can only be grown.  And that means that in essence the machines are no different than ourselves.  These are not our masters we’re talking about.  These are our children.  And how can we not help but love our children?  How could they not help but love us?

We can draw a line between ourselves and our machines no more easily than I can draw a line between myself and my eyeglasses.

 

Blind faith in technological progress as salvation is called into question, especially as regards the illusion of and desire for absolute control.

Psychedelic transhumanism acknowledges the stubborn reality of the body. Our visions of the future are themselves products of our extended phenotype and evolutionary psychology and thus do not merit wholesale acceptance. Absolute control is an illusion, the consequence of ignorance about the nature of the emergent processes by which life and mind come into being.

McKenna:  Our technologies…are obviously lethal I would say, but they are fortunately a kind of chrysalis of ideological constraint that technology is in the process of dissolving.  William Butler saw this in the 19th Century, Teilhard De Chardin reached it in the forties and the fifties MacLuhan expressly articulated this vision in the fifties and the sixties.

Everything is about to get very much more complicated, much larger, the number of choices are about to exponentially explode. In a sense, these technologies point us toward, if not literal godhood, then a kind of fictional godhood. We are all going to become the masters of the narrative in which we are embedded.  Our separate stories are going to take on dimensions so multifarious that for all practical purposes we will each move into a cosmos of our own creation and control.

Attention becomes the limiting factor in an ecology of mind. And with finite attention and infinite possibility, the vast majority of whatever world in which we find ourselves will remain beyond our dominion.

New technology not only liberates new realms of expression, exploration, identity, and ethical depth but pushes the world ever-farther from our ability to control it.  This is a simple property of complex systems, as much a fact of existence as anything else.

David Pearce:  I think discontinuities in our normal state of consciousness lie ahead that exceed the gulf today between waking and dreaming consciousness. What can’t even be discussed today because we lack the necessary “primitive terms” may well be the most important. What can the congenitally blind person say about the nature of visual experience? For the congenitally blind, more illuminating than intelligence-amplification is the gift of sight.

I think it’s fair to say the transhumanist community is mostly interested in intelligence-amplification — superintelligence rather than supersentience. I share an interest in cognitive enhancement, but in my opinion there is an important sense in which a congenitally blind person with an IQ of 220, or 920!, is just as ignorant as a congenitally blind person with an IQ of 120.  I worry more about our ignorance in the latter sense than I do about our limited reasoning powers. Psychedelic drugs can briefly give us a tiny insight into how “blind” we normally are; but we soon lapse into ignorance again. Such is the state-dependence of memory. If I’d never tried psychedelics, then I fear I would be scornful of their significance because of the incoherence of most users’ descriptions of their effects. But using the blindness analogy again, someone congenitally blind who is surgically guaranteed the gift of sight can take years before they can make sense of the visual world…at first they are overwhelmed and confused by visual stimuli.

We are linguistically unprepared to address the incredible diversity of perspectives that seem poised to bloom from increasing disparities in bodymind configurations and deepening strata of developmental levels within each of those continua.  Claiming to know how these trends will ultimately manifest themselves in the world is what Leary called “caterpillar fantasies about what post-larval life will be like.”

Given an imperfect knowledge of the future, we have to be careful that transhumanism does not lapse into merely commodifying the unknowable, playing to people’s drive for immortality and pleasure as a meme in competition with the satisfaction of more immediate concerns.  If transhumanism is understood as faith in our transcendental potential, then wisdom is a technology and real transhumanism starts now.

Davis:  How do we live with creative intelligence and awakened senses in a groundless world beyond our control?

Behind the veneer of objective medicine, psychopharmacology is simply offering its ownresolutely philosophical answer to the eternal problem of human suffering: Use technology to control its symptoms. The posthuman self is a self on drugs — SSRIs, hormones, brain boosters, neurotransmitters.  We have entered an era that sanctions the psychoactive use of commercial chemicals, not just to cure disease or even to relieve suffering, but to reformat who we feel we are.

It’s likely that people will become ever more comfortable with the notion that unpleasant (and unproductive) psychological states are simply bad code in the Darwinian bio-computer. And once you’re comfortably ensconced inside that materialist cosmology, where meaning is secondary to mechanics, there is no particularly compelling reason (other than medical fallout) not to debug the mind with consumer molecules.

The paradox is that these mechanistic molecules can produce deeper, more authentic selves. People on SSRIs often describe themselves as finally feeling like normal people, like the person they were meant to be. This paradox…lies at the heart of the posthuman condition.

If one thing makes itself apparent from the psychedelic experience, it’s that the more you know the more you don’t know, and admitting this is a form of death.  The acceleration of intelligence and extension of the individual lifespan means that life itself will increasingly come to resemble a constant re-imagining of self — not the indefinite perpetuation that many of us desire, but an ongoing process of death and rebirth.  And by its very nature, death is across the event horizon, an impenetrable unknown.

Davis:  If I choose to automatically curb a basic dimension of my interior life with a targeted chemical, haven’t I implicitly adopted a highly constricted model of what constitutes “the self”? Rather than embrace these new feelings of relief as the “real me,” someone who modifies their everyday personality with pharmaceutical products must identify with the “I” that chooses to instrumentally control its states of mind.

Most advertising is aimed at the Controller, that portion of self that wants to expand its ability to manipulate the world in order to achieve its goals. Psychiatric drugs, though, add a crucial twist. When [pharmaceutical companies claim that their drugs] can “help you handle it,” the “it” in question is, in the end, nothing other than a now-alienated portion of you.

That’s OK if the goal of your life is simply to feel as good as possible for as long as possible. But happiness and freedom may ultimately depend less on maintaining particular states of mind than on cultivating the appropriate attitude toward whatever states of mind arise out of the elegant chaos of life. And it seems to me that control is not the attitude to hold in the long run.

 

Seeing the unconscious as persistent and progress as a dialectic leads to the ethical imperative of what can be generally understood as “heart”… a consequent sense of responsibility and a call for coherent and mature visioning of a future upon which we can collectively agree.

Ultimately, a transcendental future does not simply fall on us but is something we collaboratively construct in every moment.

Leary:  A renaissance preaches a basic religion of humanism.  The aim of individual life is to know yourself and treat each other as human beings…

Davis:  Work like that at Princeton University, measuring fields of human consciousness — for example when lots of people focus their attention on sporting events — suggests that it might actually matter what we think about. Then you look at…how technology allows certain kinds of imagination such extraordinary power. I think we’ve lost the tools to navigate these worlds the old-fashioned way, we’re almost rending the physical body, spending more and more time in that kind of etheric space, with no idea what we’re doing, and the fact that this is going to have real world consequences is kind of obvious.

Of course the whole world has always been interconnected, and everyone depends on the world around them, but we tend to feel that we’re outside of that, that we’re individual subjects, that we have control over nature. So it’s almost like a return of the repressed — we want that back again, we need it back if we’re going to deal with sociological and ecological problems.

Pesce:  Even as we talk about this gnostic release, this uploading of the soul into some sort of silicon…there’s this body that’s behind, sort of bitching, saying “I am real.  And I am the potential, I am the ground in which you work.”

The question of the body is one of the largest questions in virtual reality.  Where is the body in cyberspace?  Where are you when your email is flashing across the net, when your agents are doing your bidding?  Where are you, and how do you maintain your self?

Psychedelics can produce these boundary dissolutions where you flow into another thing.  What we’re going to see, and it’s actually quite true that certain types of VR can produce the precisely same affect.  There are zones where virtual reality can be very dangerous for that reason, or incredibly powerful and meaningful for that reason. So…I really want to work from the heart.

I personally think in my own philosophy that to work in technology, you have to work from the heart center. Because otherwise you’ll create golems, you’ll create Frankensteins, your creations will run away from you. That’s the essence of the story of the golem — that this is a creature that was created with the breath of life but without the light of knowledge or the heart.  The heart of God.

I also want to explore the joyous nature of what we can do.  One of my biggest gripes about the internet is that it can’t, as yet, contain the tenor of human emotion which is so important.  If we’re building this edifice to be the global mind and it can’t laugh, we’ve got a big problem.  If it can’t sing, we’ve got a big problem.

McKenna:  And what we’re talking about here is using technological prosthesis to extend and enrich humanness, to enrich communication, and it is, believe me, the want of good communication.  If anything undoes us, this will be it:  that our languages fail, that we misread each other’s intent, that we could not understand each other.

So I’m seeing here almost a theosophical epiphany of language trying to bootstrap itself toward realms of platonic perfection, which as organic beings we experience as Love.  Love, Beauty, Truth — these are the vectors of human becoming. They always have been, they always will be, and the technologies that open these paths for us are no more and no less powerful than the human beings that wield them.  So this is an enterprise of integrity and millenial implication, and what lies as the goal is true humanness, in sympathetic symbiosis with the planet, and with these strange children that we have brought into the world, our machines.  That is the challenge at the end of history.

As we approach the event horizon, the only mature response is a humble participation in its unfolding mystery…which involves a deep scrutiny of our assumptions that the future will be the modified present, that the posthuman will be merely “humanity plus.”

We think we make the future.  But it is equally true that the future that makes us, to the degree that our thoughts of the future constitute our minds in this moment, and these minds constrain our experience both present and forthcoming.  The fantastic power of language and information upon which the psychedelic transhumanists agree enthrones humble and compassionate intent as a crucial touchstone in our construction of a posthuman ecology of minds.  The prevailing theme is that while we may not understand what we are, or are becoming, one thing is clear:  We’re all on this trip together.

– Bibliography –

Davis, Erik.

The Posthuman Touch.”

Interview with Fortean Times.

“Neopaganism.”

“Take The Red Pill.”

“…….”

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Leary,Timothy.

Interview with Skip E Lowe.

The Eightfold Model of Human Consciousness.

 

McKenna,Terence & Mark Pesce.

Dialogue at Esalen Center.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l38faoCTyTE&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPrfDACDccw&feature=related

 

Pesce,Mark.

Lecture at Burning Man 2006.

“Toysand the Playful World.”

 

McKenna,Terence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l38faoCTyTE&NR=1

 

Pearce, David.

Personal correspondence.

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/bio/post-darwinian-ethics

http://www.hedweb.com/confile.htm

 

Michael Garfield is an evolutionary theorist who divides his time between writing, music, and visual art — all of which can be found online at michaelgarfield.blogspot.com.  He also moderates the Visionary Music Group at Evolver.net.

Image Credits:  Leary – Courtesy of Philip H Bailey, McKenna – Courtesy of Erowid, Mark Pesce – Mark Pesce, Erik Davis – Andy Miah. Background photo by Paul Downey.

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Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing DMT.

DMT Art: A Look Behind Visionary Creations
An entire genre of artwork is inspired by psychedelic trips with DMT. Read to learn about the entities and visions behind DMT art.

Changa vs. DMT: What You Need to Know
While similar (changa contains DMT), each drug has its own unique effect and feeling. Let’s compare and contrast changa vs DMT.

5-MeO-DMT Guide: Effects, Benefits, Safety, and Legality
5-Meo-DMT comes from the Sonora Desert toad. Here is everything you want to know about 5-Meo-DMT and how it compares to 4-AcO-DMT.

4-AcO-DMT Guide: Benefits, Effects, Safety, and Legality
This guide tells you everything about 4 AcO DMT & 5 MeO DMT, that belong to the tryptamine class, and are similar but slightly different to DMT.

How Much Does LSD Cost? When shopping around for that magical psychedelic substance, there can be many uncertainties when new to buying LSD. You may be wondering how much does LSD cost? In this article, we will discuss what to expect when purchasing LSD on the black market, what forms LSD is sold in, and the standard breakdown of buying LSD in quantity.   Navy Use of LSD on the Dark Web The dark web is increasingly popular for purchasing illegal substances. The US Navy has now noticed this trend with their staff. Read to learn more.   Having Sex on LSD: What You Need to Know Can you have sex on LSD? Read our guide to learn everything about sex on acid, from lowered inhibitions to LSD users quotes on sex while tripping.   A Drug That Switches off an LSD Trip A pharmaceutical company is developing an “off-switch” drug for an LSD trip, in the case that a bad trip can happen. Some would say there is no such thing.   Queen of Hearts: An Interview with Liz Elliot on Tim Leary and LSD The history of psychedelia, particularly the British experience, has been almost totally written by men. Of the women involved, especially those who were in the thick of it, little has been written either by or about them. A notable exception is Liz Elliot.   LSD Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety LSD, Lysergic acid diethylamide, or just acid is one of the most important psychedelics ever discovered. What did history teach us?   Microdosing LSD & Common Dosage Explained Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing LSD.   LSD Resources Curious to learn more about LSD? This guide includes comprehensive LSD resources containing books, studies and more.   LSD as a Spiritual Aid There is common consent that the evolution of mankind is paralleled by the increase and expansion of consciousness. From the described process of how consciousness originates and develops, it becomes evident that its growth depends on its faculty of perception. Therefore every means of improving this faculty should be used.   Legendary LSD Blotter Art: A Hidden Craftsmanship Have you ever heard of LSD blotter art? Explore the trippy world of LSD art and some of the top artists of LSD blotter art.   LSD and Exercise: Does it Work? LSD and exercise? Learn why high-performing athletes are taking hits of LSD to improve their overall potential.   Jan Bastiaans Treated Holocaust Survivors with LSD Dutch psychiatrist, Jan Bastiaans administered LSD-assisted therapy to survivors of the Holocaust. A true war hero and pioneer of psychedelic-therapy.   LSD and Spiritual Awakening I give thanks for LSD, which provided the opening that led me to India in 1971 and brought me to Neem Karoli Baba, known as Maharajji. Maharajji is described by the Indians as a “knower of hearts.”   How LSD is Made: Everything You Need to Know Ever wonder how to make LSD? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how LSD is made.   How to Store LSD: Best Practices Learn the best way to store LSD, including the proper temperature and conditions to maximize how long LSD lasts when stored.   Bicycle Day: The Discovery of LSD Every year on April 19th, psychonauts join forces to celebrate Bicycle Day. Learn about the famous day when Albert Hoffman first discovered the effects of LSD.   Cary Grant: A Hollywood Legend On LSD Cary Grant was a famous actor during the 1930’s-60’s But did you know Grant experimented with LSD? Read our guide to learn more.   Albert Hofmann: LSD — My Problem Child Learn about Albert Hofmann and his discovery of LSD, along with the story of Bicycle Day and why it marks a historic milestone.   Babies are High: What Does LSD Do To Your Brain What do LSD and babies have in common? Researchers at the Imperial College in London discover that an adult’s brain on LSD looks like a baby’s brain.   1P LSD: Effects, Benefits, Safety Explained 1P LSD is an analogue of LSD and homologue of ALD-25. Here is everything you want to know about 1P LSD and how it compares to LSD.   Francis Crick, DNA & LSD Type ‘Francis Crick LSD’ into Google, and the result will be 30,000 links. Many sites claim that Crick (one of the two men responsible for discovering the structure of DNA), was either under the influence of LSD at the time of his revelation or used the drug to help with his thought processes during his research. Is this true?   What Happens If You Overdose on LSD? A recent article presented three individuals who overdosed on LSD. Though the experience was unpleasant, the outcomes were remarkably positive.

The Ayahuasca Experience
Ayahuasca is both a medicine and a visionary aid. You can employ ayahuasca for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual repair, and you can engage with the power of ayahuasca for deeper insight and realization. If you consider attainment of knowledge in the broadest perspective, you can say that at all times, ayahuasca heals.

 

Trippy Talk: Meet Ayahuasca with Sitaramaya Sita and PlantTeachers
Sitaramaya Sita is a spiritual herbalist, pusangera, and plant wisdom practitioner formally trained in the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition.

 

The Therapeutic Value of Ayahuasca
My best description of the impact of ayahuasca is that it’s a rocket boost to psychospiritual growth and unfolding, my professional specialty during my thirty-five years of private practice.

 

Microdosing Ayahuasca: Common Dosage Explained
What is ayahuasca made of and what is considered a microdose? Explore insights with an experienced Peruvian brewmaster and learn more about this practice.

 

Ayahuasca Makes Neuron Babies in Your Brain
Researchers from Beckley/Sant Pau Research Program have shared the latest findings in their study on the effects of ayahuasca on neurogenesis.

 

The Fatimiya Sufi Order and Ayahuasca
In this interview, the founder of the Fatimiya Sufi Order,  N. Wahid Azal, discusses the history and uses of plant medicines in Islamic and pre-Islamic mystery schools.

 

Consideration Ayahuasca for Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Research indicates that ayahuasca mimics mechanisms of currently accepted treatments for PTSD. In order to understand the implications of ayahuasca treatment, we need to understand how PTSD develops.

 

Brainwaves on Ayahuasca: A Waking Dream State
In a study researchers shared discoveries showing ingredients found in Ayahuasca impact the brainwaves causing a “waking dream” state.

 

Cannabis and Ayahuasca: Mixing Entheogenic Plants
Cannabis and Ayahuasca: most people believe they shouldn’t be mixed. Read this personal experience peppered with thoughts from a pro cannabis Peruvian Shaman.

 

Ayahuasca Retreat 101: Everything You Need to Know to Brave the Brew
Ayahuasca has been known to be a powerful medicinal substance for millennia. However, until recently, it was only found in the jungle. Word of its deeply healing and cleansing properties has begun to spread across the world as many modern, Western individuals are seeking spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. More ayahuasca retreat centers are emerging in the Amazon and worldwide to meet the demand.

 

Ayahuasca Helps with Grief
A new study published in psychopharmacology found that ayahuasca helped those suffering from the loss of a loved one up to a year after treatment.

 

Ayahuasca Benefits: Clinical Improvements for Six Months
Ayahuasca benefits can last six months according to studies. Read here to learn about the clinical improvements from drinking the brew.

 

Ayahuasca Culture: Indigenous, Western, And The Future
Ayahuasca has been use for generations in the Amazon. With the rise of retreats and the brew leaving the rainforest how is ayahuasca culture changing?

 

Ayahuasca Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
The Amazonian brew, Ayahuasca has a long history and wide use. Read our guide to learn all about the tea from its beginnings up to modern-day interest.

 

Ayahuasca and the Godhead: An Interview with Wahid Azal of the Fatimiya Sufi Order
Wahid Azal, a Sufi mystic of The Fatimiya Sufi Order and an Islamic scholar, talks about entheogens, Sufism, mythology, and metaphysics.

 

Ayahuasca and the Feminine: Women’s Roles, Healing, Retreats, and More
Ayahuasca is lovingly called “grandmother” or “mother” by many. Just how feminine is the brew? Read to learn all about women and ayahuasca.

What Is the Standard of Care for Ketamine Treatments?
Ketamine therapy is on the rise in light of its powerful results for treatment-resistant depression. But, what is the current standard of care for ketamine? Read to find out.

What Is Dissociation and How Does Ketamine Create It?
Dissociation can take on multiple forms. So, what is dissociation like and how does ketamine create it? Read to find out.

Having Sex on Ketamine: Getting Physical on a Dissociative
Curious about what it could feel like to have sex on a dissociate? Find out all the answers in our guide to sex on ketamine.

Special K: The Party Drug
Special K refers to Ketamine when used recreationally. Learn the trends as well as safety information around this substance.

Kitty Flipping: When Ketamine and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Read to explore the mechanics of kitty flipping.

Ketamine vs. Esketamine: 3 Important Differences Explained
Ketamine and esketamine are used to treat depression. But what’s the difference between them? Read to learn which one is right for you: ketamine vs. esketamine.

Guide to Ketamine Treatments: Understanding the New Approach
Ketamine is becoming more popular as more people are seeing its benefits. Is ketamine a fit? Read our guide for all you need to know about ketamine treatments.

Ketamine Treatment for Eating Disorders
Ketamine is becoming a promising treatment for various mental health conditions. Read to learn how individuals can use ketamine treatment for eating disorders.

Ketamine Resources, Studies, and Trusted Information
Curious to learn more about ketamine? This guide includes comprehensive ketamine resources containing books, studies and more.

Ketamine Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to ketamine has everything you need to know about this “dissociative anesthetic” and how it is being studied for depression treatment.

Ketamine for Depression: A Mental Health Breakthrough
While antidepressants work for some, many others find no relief. Read to learn about the therapeutic uses of ketamine for depression.

Ketamine for Addiction: Treatments Offering Hope
New treatments are offering hope to individuals suffering from addiction diseases. Read to learn how ketamine for addiction is providing breakthrough results.

Microdosing Ketamine & Common Dosages Explained
Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing ketamine.

How to Ease a Ketamine Comedown
Knowing what to expect when you come down from ketamine can help integrate the experience to gain as much value as possible.

How to Store Ketamine: Best Practices
Learn the best ways how to store ketamine, including the proper temperature and conditions to maximize how long ketamine lasts when stored.

How To Buy Ketamine: Is There Legal Ketamine Online?
Learn exactly where it’s legal to buy ketamine, and if it’s possible to purchase legal ketamine on the internet.

How Long Does Ketamine Stay in Your System?
How long does ketamine stay in your system? Are there lasting effects on your body? Read to discover the answers!

How Ketamine is Made: Everything You Need to Know
Ever wonder how to make Ketamine? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how Ketamine is made.

Colorado on Ketamine: First Responders Waiver Programs
Fallout continues after Elijah McClain. Despite opposing recommendations from some city council, Colorado State Health panel recommends the continued use of ketamine by medics for those demonstrating “excited delirium” or “extreme agitation”.

Types of Ketamine: Learn the Differences & Uses for Each
Learn about the different types of ketamine and what they are used for—and what type might be right for you. Read now to find out!

Kitty Flipping: When Ketamine and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Read to explore the mechanics of kitty flipping.

MDMA & Ecstasy Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to MDMA has everything you want to know about Ecstasy from how it was developed in 1912 to why it’s being studied today.

How To Get the Most out of Taking MDMA as a Couple
Taking MDMA as a couple can lead to exciting experiences. Read here to learn how to get the most of of this love drug in your relationship.

Common MDMA Dosage & Microdosing Explained
Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing MDMA.

Having Sex on MDMA: What You Need to Know
MDMA is known as the love drug… Read our guide to learn all about sex on MDMA and why it is beginning to makes its way into couple’s therapy.

How MDMA is Made: Common Procedures Explained
Ever wonder how to make MDMA? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how MDMA is made.

Hippie Flipping: When Shrooms and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Explore the mechanics of hippie flipping and how to safely experiment.

How Cocaine is Made: Common Procedures Explained
Ever wonder how to make cocaine? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how cocaine is made.

A Christmas Sweater with Santa and Cocaine
This week, Walmart came under fire for a “Let it Snow” Christmas sweater depicting Santa with lines of cocaine. Columbia is not merry about it.

Ultimate Cocaine Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
This guide covers what you need to know about Cocaine, including common effects and uses, legality, safety precautions and top trends today.

NEWS: An FDA-Approved Cocaine Nasal Spray
The FDA approved a cocaine nasal spray called Numbrino, which has raised suspicions that the pharmaceutical company, Lannett Company Inc., paid off the FDA..

The Ultimate Guide to Cannabis Bioavailability
What is bioavailability and how can it affect the overall efficacy of a psychedelic substance? Read to learn more.

Cannabis Research Explains Sociability Behaviors
New research by Dr. Giovanni Marsicano shows social behavioral changes occur as a result of less energy available to the neurons. Read here to learn more.

The Cannabis Shaman
If recreational and medical use of marijuana is becoming accepted, can the spiritual use as well? Experiential journalist Rak Razam interviews Hamilton Souther, founder of the 420 Cannabis Shamanism movement…

Cannabis Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to Cannabis has everything you want to know about this popular substances that has psychedelic properties.

Cannabis and Ayahuasca: Mixing Entheogenic Plants
Cannabis and Ayahuasca: most people believe they shouldn’t be mixed. Read this personal experience peppered with thoughts from a procannabis Peruvian Shaman.

CBD-Rich Cannabis Versus Single-Molecule CBD
A ground-breaking study has documented the superior therapeutic properties of whole plant Cannabis extract as compared to synthetic cannabidiol (CBD), challenging the medical-industrial complex’s notion that “crude” botanical preparations are less effective than single-molecule compounds.

Cannabis Has Always Been a Medicine
Modern science has already confirmed the efficacy of cannabis for most uses described in the ancient medical texts, but prohibitionists still claim that medical cannabis is “just a ruse.”

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