[steauengeglase]

While I don't doubt the psychological benefits of ayahuasca (or any hallucinogenic), the language of many of those advocating in the article set off red flags. "Format your harddrive", reminds of Arch Oboler's "Society of the Cosmos", something dreamed up by Evangelical hucksters who didn't see a future in peddling Jesus so they turned to techno speak to wring out the marks.

"We manifest abundance wherever we go," sounds even worse. That's the kind of reason Dominionist give when trying to dodge their car taxes.

What did Hunter Thompson say about the seekers who tried to buy enlightenment by the dose?

Instead the real benefit is trying to rationally understand their experience. "Wait, was there a giant hand with my dad's watch on it's wrist crushing the room? Damn, I didn't realize I was letting that take over my life."

Without that personal insight you are just dealing with pseudo-spiritual abstractions.

[k-mcgrady]

Is this the Hunter Thompson quote you're referring to?

“We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.”

[metaphorm]

leave to Hunter S. Thompson of all people to throw a little __sobriety__ into the conversation. Somebody had to say it and he said it well.

[scrame]

Well, not "of all people".

Hunter S. Thompson has that reputation from younger people as "crazy guy who did lots of drugs". That was part of it, but his reputation came from his writing and journalism. He created a new, influential style of gonzo journalism[1] where he was openly opinionated and wrote with emotional attachment, and certainly some exaggeration.

That he's remembered as "crazy guy on drugs" instead of "great writer" or "trenchant journalist" shows very well the pop culture drift that happens with public figures.

Thompson was a standout writer with a brilliant critical eye towards society and found much of it disagreeable. That he found a way to relate that to his contemporary generation is shown by his body of work.

That he's remembered as a "drug guy", so a critique of Timothy Leary is surprising is ... too bad.

Check out "Hell's Angels" or "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72", if you've got the time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism

[lostlogin]

Don't forget Rum Diary.

[mylons]

really glad you pointed this out. I had to run to my copy of Kingdom of Fear after reading the Leary quote and get away from the internet after reading some of this stuff.

My favorite passage is kind of a combination of the crazy guy, eloquent and beautiful writer, with deep and insightful commentary: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1074-strange-memories-on-thi...

[metaphorm]

of course, you're exactly right. there is a lot of nuance and depth to Hunter and many people wrongly conflate the man himself with his character Raoul Duke, who was a hyperbolic representation of Hunter's own libertine tendencies.

that said, yeah man, he really did do a lot of drugs, and wrote about it too. he was, however, a much more grounded and reasonable person than Tim Leary, and to his credit. Leary's excesses poisoned the well for a generation.

[steauengeglase]

Yep. It's been a while since I read that.

[oldmanjay]

I feel like the sheer amount of bullshit surrounding these drugs leaves me with a duty to take heavy doses of psychedelics and proudly learn nothing but "boy that was fun"

[fragola]

Agreed on the bullshit. I think this might have something to do with me growing up in a certain hippy town on the California coast, but I couldn't get through this article without a lot of eye-rolling. OK, let's just put the whole drug thing aside and call it a hobby. You can have a hobby without having a pseudospiritual and vaguely appropriative justification for it.

Bodybuilders have a term that they use to describe the mythos that has evolved in their subculture regarding steroids and supplements: Broscience. This is the yuppie drug-dabbler equivalent.

[stinkytaco]

Offtopic, but unfortunately broscience has extended beyond pharmaceuticals to training practice. This kind of thinking dominates the crossfit world with terms like "muscle confusion" and "failure". It's sad because I got into crossfit ten years ago because it was fun, something different every day kept me coming back. I didn't want to be a Navy SEAL, just to keep active, but the almost religious adherence to the training philosophy -- and the injuries sustained by several people I knew -- drove me away. Now I find myself sedentary and looking for something similar, but less pseudo-scientific.

[fragola]

I am similarly put off by yoga, which as practiced currently is not an "ancient tradition" but a bizarre relic of 19th century Indian nationalism[0]

Some people find the woo motivating, but I find it to be a distraction. I want my exercise regimen woo-free, thank you very much.

[0]http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-...

[stinkytaco]

I would actually argue that yoga is now sufficiently commercialized as to bear little resemblance to anything "ancient" or "mystical". I can buy a book, get some videos or take a class and hear nothing spiritual at all. (Side note: Mark Lauren, in his fairly good _You Are Your Own Gym_ covers yoga a bit). This isn't to say there's not lots of people selling the "spiritual enlightenment" line.

I think all exercise programs tend to have a something to sell, because otherwise how do you make money? It's an interesting balancing act, however. Your doctor can tell you "get more exercise", but that's a pretty abstract concept that requires planning, commitment and is by definition kind of uncomfortable. So a whole industry has grown up around branding exercise. It works, too. Some of it is better than others, but people, myself included, buy it. We might buy it because we're gullible, we might buy it because it's easier than coming up with our own plan or more interesting when executing it.

But the number of books that grace the shelves with words like "warrior", "ultimate", "prescription", "philosophy", "enlightenment", "Spartan", "SEAL", etc, etc, etc. is pretty staggering. But frankly, whatever works. Insurance companies often incentivize gym memberships, but rarely do they pay for you to regularly see a trainer, so whatever is safe that gets people exercising. I complain, but it's not even in the same league of problematic as unregulated administration of pharmaceuticals by spiritual leaders.

[nommm-nommm]

In practice, Yoga is pretty woo free for the most part. I was also concerned to try it because of the woo but my friends all said I'd like it.

I took some classes and not a single instructor treated the class as anything but an exercise class with some meditation at the end. I even took an "alternative" yoga class with weights.

[brusch64]

How about Kettlebell training ?

It can be done easily in your home (if you have some space) and you can do great full body workouts. I was pretty much out of shape when I've started it two years ago and now I feel great.

The people over at the Kettlebell subreddit are quite helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/kettlebell

The FAQs show some good starting points https://www.reddit.com/r/kettlebell/wiki/index

Maybe this is something for you. Altough some people around Pavel (and Strongfirst) can come off a little bit cult-ish, but I don't think that it is too bad.

[stinkytaco]

I have a few around. When I lifted competitively (15 years ago?) we had a few Pavel guys in the community. Nice guys but... weird.

My biggest issue with kettlebells is that my basement ceiling is low so swinging them is probably out and I've only got 7 months or so of outdoor training. I'll check it out, however, can't hurt to ask.

[brusch64]

swinging shouldn't be a problem if you are doing the russian swing (maximum shoulder height).

For the more advanced exercises military press, snatch and clean and jerk you need a room where you can stand up with your hands straight above your head.

I am training outside the whole year, but it doesn't get extremely cold here in winter -5° to -10° Celsius is pretty much the minimum. But I am under a roof and so it works for me (but I have to store the Kettlebells indoor so the handles are warm).

[severine]

Ping-pong is great, and sex.

[stinkytaco]

We used to have a local ping pong group that met regularly and I had a few friends who did it. Then they lost their venue for being to loud and boisterous. Apparently there were a few people who were intense about ping pong.

[taneq]

Have you tried interval training? I've had the best return on effort with that out of everything I've tried (jogging, traditional gym work, cycling). It's light on broscience and seems to be supported by all the 'real' scientific testing. It only takes 10-15 minutes per day and it's completely self-guided (I use a timer app on my phone to keep track of intervals.)

[stinkytaco]

Like HIIT? A bit. I did the NYTimes 7 minute workout for a bit to try and break out of a rut. It was pretty good, but I fell off that wagon too, partially lack of variety, I think. It reminded me a bit of basic training. I think there's got to be a market for guided training like that. They were often used for punishment, but I liked grass drills.

[nl]

I hear good things about parkour. Never tried it myself though.

[empath75]

Yeah, there is a lot of bullshit around psychedelics, and it's totally possible to take them and just have fun, but if you're interested in the way the mind works and how we piece together reality from our perceptions, there is a lot to work with there. I think where people go wrong is in thinking that drug experiences show you some truth that's hidden from you in normal life. It really just shows you how ill equipped your brain is to understand reality, or how ill-conceived the idea of 'reality' really is.

[Fraterkes]

I think the idea of seeing some hidden truth, comes simply from seeing the world from some other perspective. I guess the problem people have with that is that people who take drugs talk like their epiphanies are only obtainable by doing drugs (and thus unique and rare). When instead drugs are more tools to find out things you personally didn't know.

[vbhavsar]

Very well said.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Exactly. We don't need to take psychedelics with the intention to get smarter or enlightened.

We can take psychedelics just to enjoy psychedelics. This is a good enough reason.

[steauengeglase]

That's a valid reason. So is "I wanna knock some of the BS in my head loose".

I may be close minded, but "To receive the essence of Grandmother's wisdom and understand the psychic vibrations, not within us, but beside us, as I'm guided by the Jaguar riding the Anaconda, who is really the glory beyond our lesser selves, being to us a more perfect realm as Grandmother wishes it through the greater understanding of our abundant vision..." doesn't really sound like a reason.

Not that I'd stop someone from doing it for that reason, but I fail to see how it's the least bit useful and it seems ripe for exploitation.

[lsd_throwaway]

There's a lot of bullshit - and most people are drawn in by pseudoscience nonsense. I was interested in seeing what people were talking about and the perspective change (also Sam Harris, lots of historical people, Huxley, What the Dormouse Said, everything I'd read etc.)

I tried it basically with as most preparation as you could possibly have and it wasn't enough. There's more detail in my posting history, but I'd suggest caution.

[cnp]

Or "boy was I wrong -- wow"

[Kroniker]

One of my favorite Terrence McKenna quotes:

"Once you've gotten the message, hang up the phone."

Hallucinogens may deliver you the message, but you need to know to take it once you have it, and not go crazy taking more and more. I have a friend who fell down that rabbit hole. Doesn't seem to end well.

[Animats]

In "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", Feynman describes using LSD at the encouragement of John Lily, who claimed it would improve his thinking. Feynman tried it, and thought he'd solved a problem he was working on. As he was preparing to give a talk on the solution, he realized that he hadn't solved the problem; he'd only hallucinated that he had solved the problem. He was furious. That ended his experimentation with LSD. He wrote "I like to think, and I don't want to break the machine."

[SiVal]

I loved that story in the book, because it was so much like my own experience with simple dreaming. We often hear about the brilliant creativity of our dreaming minds and the deep answers that await us if we'll pay attention to our dreams. I figured that was safer than drugs, so I kept a dream journal, because it was supposed to help you remember your dreams better (it does) and unleash the genius of your unconscious.

Over time, I had several instances of making some progress on a question (programming logic design, for example) as I was on the border of awake and asleep, but these were essentially just the result of awake-enough thinking through of a problem as I lay there just before I fell asleep.

But I did have a few instances of real solutions in my sleep that I thought were major breakthroughs. The funny thing was that almost the instant I woke up, I saw fatal flaws in those "breakthroughs" that had been completely invisible to the triumphant, celebrating genius that I was in the dream. Literally seconds after regaining consciousness, I would see how ridiculous my brilliant idea was because of something I had completely overlooked in my dream state but was instantly obvious in my waking state. (Waking up literally does bring some crucial part of your reasoning back online.)

After a few of these, I put away the dream journal with a chuckle and got another good laugh when I read about Feynman's experience with LSD. After my own experience, I can easily imagine how you might feel as though your intoxicated mind was somehow operating on a "higher plane" when cut free of the restraints of reality, but it doesn't mean that what you discover there is of any real value back in the world of reality.

As much fun as it sounds, with no benefits beyond the entertainment value and the serious risks involved--a top student and mentor of mine back in school raised his consciousness so high that he lost the ability to feed or dress himself in the real world ever again--I'll just stick to actual consciousness.

[fulafel]

There are anecdotes about successful breakthroughs as well. The more famous one is Francis Crick coming up with the double-helix of DNA while on LSD.

Then there's a well known psych experiment from the 60s that claims pretty good results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelics_in_problem-solvin...

[psyc]

I learned OpenGL during an LSD trip. My subjective experience was that the information just went in without any resistance. I've since written a lot of OpenGL code, and I can run it all and see that it objectively works. Of course, I've learned hundreds of other things without taking any drugs. But, again subjectively, it's usually more incremental and seems like more of a struggle with attention and comprehension. At least, I can say that I didn't get anything wrong with OpenGL. I didn't hallucinate that I learned it. The programs I wrote immediately following the trip worked fine.

[civilian]

I agree. I got the message, and hung up the phone.

My friend is also have difficulty leaving the path. A couple of months ago my buddy & I got some urgent texts from him-- he had taken a really large dose of LSD and ended up spending the next 12 hours in a emergency room's psych ward.

I think that part of the reason that we have this B.S. propaganda around psychedelics (i.e. "They're the key to enlightenment!") is that it can be pretty hard to encourage people to try drugs. And while they aren't the key to enlightenment, they are just such a _different_ experience that it can be... interesting, or help personal growth, in some lesser but still substantial ways. But that's not a great soundbite.

Marketing is much harder than we give it credit for.

//edit although on further googling, I think the quote is from Alan Watts and it's about sober meditation after a trip.

> "Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen..."

[NotSammyHagar]

> it can be pretty hard to encourage people to try drugs

I think that in our society we have a problem with people taking too many drugs already. Deadly smoking of tobacco is decreasing but still too common (killed my mom). Booze and coffee are things people tolerate but use to adjust their mood. Pot seems to finally becoming accepted by law abiding society. But do we need to encourage more than this? As a parent of a teenager who is generally tolerant of such things, I'm suddenly feeling I want society to have less drugs ;-)

Seriously, would society be improved with more psychedelics?

[civilian]

I think you should read (or listen to) Sam Harris talk about psychedelics. (I really enjoy him, but my dad thinks that he's boring as shit. Either way, you can be reassured that he's not someone who jumps to conclusions-- he's a methodical person.) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/drugs-and-the-meaning...

The key paragraphs are:

> I have two daughters who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that they choose their drugs wisely, but a life lived entirely without drugs is neither foreseeable nor, I think, desirable. I hope they someday enjoy a morning cup of tea or coffee as much as I do. If they drink alcohol as adults, as they probably will, I will encourage them to do it safely. If they choose to smoke marijuana, I will urge moderation.[2] Tobacco should be shunned, and I will do everything within the bounds of decent parenting to steer them away from it. Needless to say, if I knew that either of my daughters would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if they don’t try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in their adult lives, I will wonder whether they had missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.

> This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers. Undoubtedly, some people cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug. It has been many years since I took psychedelics myself, and my abstinence is born of a healthy respect for the risks involved. However, there was a period in my early twenties when I found psilocybin and LSD to be indispensable tools, and some of the most important hours of my life were spent under their influence. Without them, I might never have discovered that there was an inner landscape of mind worth exploring.

[collyw]

Psychedelics have far less harm on health than the legal drugs you listed.

[saiya-jin]

in place where such an evil thing as alcohol is legal and widely accepted, there is no good enough excuse to have psychedelics banned by state.

I am not saying everybody should do them, far from it, but people shouldn't be banned from access on their free will under threat of destroying the life by jail time - that's beyond ridiculous.

[tejaswidp]

Alan watts said that. Terrence Mckenna would probably say the opposite.

[Alex3917]

Terence McKenna used that quote a lot actually, but it was from Watts.

[metaphorm]

there were two Terrence McKenna's.

One was a carnival barker, a demagogue, and showman who preaches to the choir about all kinds of things that excites them. those people bought tickets to hear him speak, and indeed, he gave them what they wanted.

the other was a deeply insightful and contemplative man who was a scholar, philosopher, and mystic. he said what he meant and what he believed to be true, regardless of what the audience might have thought about it.

there were two Alan Watts as well, of course. he was a public persona just as much as Terrence ever was. More-so actually.

[hosh]

It's true even if you don't take psychedelics. There's a tendency to confuse peak experiences (however that comes about) and awakening.

Bonnie Greewall, who wrote her PhD dissertation on specific form of spiritual emergence in the field of transpersonal psychology is one person who teaches this. She speaks of people who, having confused those peak experiences with "enlightenment", goes on trying to seek out greater and greater experiences. There is a kind of withdrawal effect that happens when the next big thing doesn't show up. This is in contrast to awakening, in which one is aware of true nature as awareness. This awareness is available in all states, whether blissful or wrathful, with or without psychedelics.

At the end of the day though, it's still about awareness, whether that is in the ceremony or in the ordinary life.

I think the psychedelics gives the kick out of the nest some people need. I know a lot of folks roll their eyes at some of the things being said in the article, but having participated in ceremonies and hanged out with the folks who go, they are not as far-fetched as you might think it is. Both the cringe-inducing quotes and the folks who roll their eyes are, I think, representative of the the spiritual miasma and dis-ease in modern society.

And since I got into some drama here the last time I said something like this, I'm going to try to write as clearly here: while there are some people who can answer what these peak experiences and these spiritual paths do for themselves as individuals, we as a human species and a race _as a whole_ still have not figured out the place and purpose of spirituality in modernity. Modernity was first the separation, and then the complete disassociation of spirituality. A Dagara medicine man friend of mine puts it, "there were the Keepers, the Breakers, and the Menders". The Keepers are traditionalists. The Breakers are modernists. The Menders are only emerging.

Modernity broke the traditional views, with some proponents seeing themselves as heroes for doing so. Although it isn't as if all traditional views were all that great, in the glee to toss everything out that smacked of traditional, we left a big gaping hole in our beings. We don't even have the language in modernity to speak of this without feeling cynical, or opening ourselves to being attacked for being superstitious.

This is the hole that traditional spirit medicines like Ayahuasca helps now -- despite, as the article says, it wasn't traditionally used that way. It just happens to be something a lot of us need, even if we don't always know we need it.

But since we don't have modern (or post-modern) language or framework to speak about spirituality in a coherent way ... well, let's just say we're all engaged in a grand discussion about that, groping together towards the answer. Ayahuasca is part of that ongoing groping we humans are doing.

Whatever we come up with, it's going to radically include both traditional and modern view, both rational -- and yes, irrational and transrational things about our world.