[nowherecat]

Having had frequent ceremonies over the course of several months I stopped drinking the tea, because I find it is not helping being pulled from one extreme into another. Our western way of life makes it very difficult to integrate the profound experiences that one can get through this medicine and it requires major commitments to change..and it requires good helpers and facilitators. We, as westerners, are often times not equipped to integrate this lost wisdom into our lives. I know it is said it is not addictive but I know enough people that at least appear dependent on it and swear by it being the solution.

I personally believe that meditation and journeying inward without drugs brings about insights of a similar magnitude in a pace that we can cope with and integrate what we learn without jojo’ing between bliss and depression.

Ayahuasca has its place. It definitely helped us experience that there is much more to life than the material. But in my opinion I t’s a sledge Hammer that helps crack hard nuts or sets a direction. The work has to be done by oneself and the risk with ayahuasca is that one just keeps drinking the tea, thinking that that is enough.

Apart from that it is quite dangerous nowadays to do ceremonies with traveling “shamans”, because a lot of them don’t even brew the tea themselves and oftentimes facilitate in a way that it is bound to go wrong at some point.

[kobeya]

Or psychoactive drugs don’t teach you anything new but rather modify brain functionality such that you feel different. Gaining new belief or believing you have new beliefs are typically indistinguishable from the inside.

[nowherecat]

Well, could’t You say the same thing about experiences of any nature? For example: our thoughts always affect our body/mind .. if I take a drug or in the case of ayahuasca an entheogen, it creates a non ordinary state of consciousness, which -if strong enough- can permanently change the way I feel and act. The same you could achieve by meditating on a regular basis or going on a long trip, having a traumatic experience etc .. our brains are being modified constantly by our experiences, not just by drugs. And yeah, a belief is a belief - if it’s a conscious belief you could say ‘I believe in having this belief’ and if it’s unconscious it’s just a belief I am not consciously aware of. But both have the same Effect on my body and mind

[kobeya]

It permanently changes you by causing conditions by which your brain rewires itself. For psychiatric patients that is often a good thing because where they are at is not a good place. But why would you throw a spanner in the works if you're already a well adjusted individual?

If you want to be content and enjoy life, why not get a lobotomy. It's a more consistent result. Oh you don't want to do that to your brain? Well acid may have different mechanisms but can trigger similarly drastic effects, it's just now you've introduced a roll of the die, and I'm not a fan of gambling without a winning strategy.

[KennyCason]

Given your very clear and strong stance that this is something you won't ever try, of which I don't have any issue with, I won't spend a lot of time debating this statement. But, your analogy with getting a lobotomy to enjoy life being even remotely equivalent to doing psychedelics is simply wrong. The effects are not similar. You are also drastically overestimating the gambling nature of psychedelics. You're probably way more likely to wreck your life while drinking alcohol than you are with psychedelics.

[mustacheemperor]

What is different between having a new belief and having your brain functionality modified such that you indistinguishably genuinely feel you have a new belief? Wouldn't the act of integrating a new belief also modify your brain functionality somehow? Not trying to start an esoteric argument, I'm interested if there's an actual answer to that.

[kobeya]

You can profoundly understand something because you understand the mechanism of its working and have deeply integrated it into your mental model of the world. Or you can "profoundly understand" something by having your brain remember what it feels like to profoundly understand, and enter that state in association with the new belief. Even if the belief is wrong (and you will never see that it is wrong).

[jasonm23]

Corrective lenses don't teach you anything directly, but you can see more wearing them.

[remir]

I agree. Sometimes these substances act like a bulldozer that destroy doors that should have remained closed. For some people, opening these "doors" will lead to more harm than good. I am not writing this to demonize psychedelics, but only to say they can be unpredictable.

As I grow older, I realize we are the product of organized and sometimes very ancient memories and obviously we have not been told (by parents, society) to take a step back and look at things from a detached perspective. As a results, we are like prisoners of memories, symbols and habits, unable to see what's beyond all that.